


All the Secrets of the Universe

by sinigmas (jaystrifes)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Age-balanced, As in Dipper progressively growing up, Bill's a little shit, But not a soulless little shit, Dipper asks a lot of questions, Eventual Romance, M/M, Magic, Platonic Relationships, Post-Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-19 13:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4747403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaystrifes/pseuds/sinigmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The most dangerous monster in Gravity Falls happens to be the one that's taken a liking to Dipper. That's okay, because Dipper's a little obsessed with him, too, and over the years he becomes invested in unraveling the mystery that is Bill Cipher. Though most of the pains in his life have been directly related to Bill, in the end, that monster is the one who's right by his side, deal or no deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A certain someone finds Dipper out in the woods way past his bedtime. It's been a year, but he's back, and things are going to get weird again.

The sun was dying behind the evergreens, stirring the sky into whorls of pastel purples and yellows and streaks of orange. As the colors washed out, overtaken by the fall of twilight, Dipper began to regret venturing out on his own. He’d been in the woods all day, mostly to escape from a fight with Mabel. He thought maybe after causing an apocalypse the last time they had a big argument in Gravity Falls, they would have learned something. Apparently not.

Normal sibling bickering was to be expected, but tensions had been running unreasonably high between them for the last few weeks. Hormones could be to blame; they were technically teenagers now, after all. And, of course, they still had their differences. Dipper and his eagerness to grow up, Mabel and her desire to stay young for all eternity. But they’d already resolved that once, hadn’t they? They’d have to grow older, but not without each other. Last summer made that clear enough, so it didn’t seem like that was the issue this time around.

Until he could come up with a solution, the safer alternative was to give her some space. In the meantime, he’d decided a solo mission wouldn’t hurt anything. Mabel was busy with whatever it was she did these days, and their great-uncles wouldn’t be in town until tomorrow, so he didn’t have much other choice unless he wanted to stay cooped up in the Mystery Shack all day with Soos. Not that he didn’t want to spend some time with Soos, but he had been itching to get out into the forest ever since he got off the bus.

Dipper couldn’t say he’d explored every inch of the woodlands around the town, and he wanted to change that this summer. Today, he’d only made it as far as the edges of his previous boundaries. The next step would be into unfamiliar territory, but he badly wanted to save that for daylight. Only so he could appreciate the sights more, of course, not because he was scared.

Although he definitely wasn’t even a little bit afraid, Dipper would have given anything to have Mabel with him. He had a spare flashlight in his backpack, and he certainly knew his way home, but it was only dark enough to make him jumpy, not to make him chicken out of his adventure. It wouldn’t hurt to go a little farther.

As he walked, Dipper swung his flashlight up at the trees, panning the dirty yellowish beam over each one, checking everything the light could reach before he moved on. He stayed poised, on watch for any dangers the deep forest might yield at night, ready for any attack.

What attacked him was an inconveniently located tree root.

A misplaced step sent him tripping over it and bouncing down the slope. Inelegantly, he tumbled to a halt halfway, digging his nails into the soil, spitting pine needles. His cheeks were scratched up, his shirt had ripped at the shoulder, and his left kneecap stung fiercely. Gritting his teeth, Dipper assessed first the damage and then his surroundings. His knee was soaked in red, but he told himself it simply looked worse than it was. He could still walk, probably. More importantly, there wasn’t much hope of scaling the steep dirt incline he came down, even with two good legs, so he would have to find another way around.

Toward the bottom of the hill, a blue glow, muted by the foliage, caught his eye. Not even a nasty fall could dull Dipper’s curiosity; that determined and unquenchable thirst for knowledge was something he shared with his great-uncle. If Ford could endure thirty years of wandering like a vagabond in strange dimensions and facing unspeakable terrors, Dipper could soldier on through a small expedition in the dark. 

Bracing one hand against the ground, he stumbled to his feet. He had to admit that maybe his injury was as bad as it looked, but he tried to take a step anyways. Predictably, his leg buckled, and he went rolling again, shielding his face with his arms as leaves and branches whipped at him. When he finally came to a stop, he curled his knee up to his chest, felt at his ankle, and grimaced when he applied pressure. Definitely sprained. Groaning, he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the patches of starry sky through the latticework of branches.

“I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Dipper sighed. He had become disoriented, with only a vague bearing of where the Mystery Shack should be, if he managed to get out of this hollow in the first place. He didn’t recognize this place, maybe because he just hadn’t fallen down this particular hill before.

So where was he? As he and Mabel would say, _when_ was he? On second thought, never mind. The old joke just made his chest hurt a little.

A bright turquoise speck drifted across Dipper’s vision, then another, both welcome interruptions to his train of thought. Squinting, he identified them as fireflies. Blue fireflies, but that small oddity ranked low on the list of things he had learned to expect in this weird town. Dipper blinked, and the first little bug vanished. Right before his eyes, a second one flashed brightly, then winked out, and wispy ashes drifted to rest on his face. They were literal _fire_ flies.

Studiously, Dipper took out a new, leather-bound book, shuffled through a few loose-leaf sheets tucked into the front cover, and jotted down his findings. While Ford was away, Dipper, hoping to impress him, had started to meticulously record every new anomaly he could find. He pinned the flashlight between his chin and shoulder while he scribbled with his pen, but it was still hard to see what he was doing. Tomorrow, he could look over it and rewrite it.

He tucked the beginnings of the new journal back into its rightful place in the deep pocket of his vest, a space that endlessly confused Mabel because of how ridiculously big it was. According to her, it had to lead to “a pocket dimension, ha-HA, get it” because he may as well have had a whole house stored alongside his pens, books, and odd trinkets.

Dipper didn’t want to think about what had changed that made them incapable of being comfortable around each other these days. Cracking jokes and goofing off together seemed to be a thing of the past. Now it was all friend drama and fashion and fighting over space in the house.

He leaned back on his hands and used his arms to adjust the big book pressed to his chest. It was similar to the old Journal 3, with the exception of the blue binding and the silver constellation on the front in place of the six-fingered hand. It was less worn, and also less burnt into ashes by demon fire. Ford had given it to him before Dipper returned home to Piedmont. He had grown so used to its weight that the vest felt empty whenever he had to leave the journal behind. He’d even taken it to school for most of the year, until an incident with some jerk trying to steal it. Said jerk had later been glitter-bombed, one of Mabel’s painfully obvious signature moves.

 _Where would I be without her?_ he wondered. He couldn’t imagine not having his sister, or even an older or younger sibling instead than a twin. They’d been born together, and that meant they’d always be together, didn’t it? Maybe not literally, but… Well, let her go off and forget about him and spend time with her friends on her first night back in town. He had whatever monsters were lurking around in the forest to keep him company. It didn’t matter.

Besides, there was too much beauty and mystery around for Dipper to keep dragging himself down with thoughts like that. He could try to make the best of it and document a few more anomalies before he attempted the walk home.

The fireflies were enchanting, if slightly depressing. As many blue specks as there were twinkling in the air, there were just as many burning out at any given moment. Beneath them all were unopened flowers, their indigo petals delicately curled in for protection against the world. He found it odd that it was long past spring, yet they still hadn’t bloomed. There seemed to be twice as many of them blanketing the grass as there were fireflies dancing above. Farther away, beyond the clearing, there was a gurgling stream, probably an offshoot of the river that wound away from the waterfall. There was even a weeping willow on its bank, but Dipper was fairly certain it wasn’t native to the area.

The other trees bordering the little hollow weren’t too tall, and if his leg wasn’t injured he might have attempted a climb to get a bird’s eye view. There were some sturdy oaks mixed in among the pines, and there was also another distinctly non-treelike shape. It moved, and Dipper gulped back a shriek of surprise, his heartbeat racing from the scare. He couldn’t imagine who would be out here in this remote area of the forest, especially in the dark, besides himself.

Whoever they were, they moved again while he was overthinking. He could only hope they were friendly, if they were even human. A long shadow fell over him. Standing in the open, it looked like the figure of a man. With a timorous flick of his thumb, Dipper switched on his flashlight, shining it right into the man’s eyes. Something inside the flashlight popped, turning bright and hot before it went dark. Dipper shook it vigorously and put it to his eye. There was a deep crack running through the lens, and the bulb had shattered.

Tongue bitten between his teeth, Dipper looked back up. The man had moved closer, close enough that his shadow completely dwarfed Dipper, and close enough for Dipper to make out his features. Hair, the color of spun gold beneath the moonlight at its back, cutting over one eye that wasn’t an eye, but rather a triangular void, black as night. Another eye that wasn’t completely normal, casting its own amber glow. A smile, made sinister by the sheer sharpness of its curve.

Why was it tonight, the one time he didn’t have Mabel with him, that he had to meet some kind of serial killer in the woods? Dipper hadn’t been expecting company, and there was nothing in his backpack he could use to defend himself if it came to that. His eyes darted in every direction, searching for any possible escape, but, taking his bad leg into account, he had no doubt that the man would be able to catch him easily.

The stranger was looking down at Dipper like he could smell his fear. “Well, well, well. Fancy seeing you here.”

A chill tingled up Dipper’s spine, and a niggling thought began to press at the back of his mind. He knew that voice from somewhere, he was certain. The pitch was off just a little bit, but it retained that unmistakable echo that reminded him of a monster, the most dangerous one he’d ever encountered, last heard howling with laughter as it invaded his uncle’s mind. Tagging that thing’s voice to this face just didn’t compute.

He could hope that this was just an ordinary man, but that little thought in his head persisted. Every clue pointed to the contrary: the predatory leer, the snappy choice of dress, the color scheme of his outfit.

An anxious knot had taken root in Dipper’s stomach. Not only that, he was sure it had sprouted and spread through his entire system, choking up his veins, his brain, his lungs. His throat felt too tight to allow words, but he forced out, in a whisper, “Who…?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me.” The man – no, definitely not a man – he sounded offended. His gloved hand flew to his chest, where a heart might lie, if he had one. “Come on, kid, look at me. Yellow suit, one eye, bow tie? I’m making it easy for you. Here.” With a neat twirl of his hand, he produced a golden cane, which he hooked over his forearm as he reached up to adjust the tiny black hat bobbing in the air just above his head. “Ring any bells in your special little head yet?”

It rang one: an alarm bell. Dizzied and keyed up to the point of nausea, Dipper shook his head, trying to hold on to handfuls of grass to keep him anchored. He knew what he was seeing, but he didn’t want to believe it. “You can’t be.”

“I do believe I can.” The man – _demon_ , he was undoubtedly the demon, no matter what face he wore in disguise ( _whose face, how had he gotten it, why_ all crossed through Dipper’s mind at top speed) – the demon tilted his head, and his lips quirked up in another smile. “Pine Tree.”

The nickname alone froze Dipper on the spot, and he could do nothing but stare with watering eyes. He’d never felt so small or so sick with fear, and he wanted to curl up in a ball and disappear into nothingness and just get out of this nightmare. It seemed like there was no escaping Bill, ever, not in his dreams and not now, no matter how many times he told himself, and Mabel told him, _Bill is dead_. She’d woken up with him at 2 in the morning to talk him down, to hug him and remind him where he was and tell him what was real and what wasn’t, school night be damned. He tried to hold on to the sound of her voice, reminding him. Dead, disappeared, gone, whatever Stan's mind had done to the demon, he wasn't here anymore.

But if Bill was dead then what could explain this? Had Dipper gone mad? Was he hallucinating? If it really was Bill, shouldn’t things have switched into grayscale by now? Or was that actually a corporeal body?

With his grin as sharp as the edge of a knife, Bill leaned on his cane. “Feels like it’s been ages, kiddo. How’ve you been? Traumatized? Always worrying whether or not this would happen? Well, the good news is you don’t have to worry about _that_ any longer.” It seemed impossible, but Bill’s grin widened, sliced across his face like a crescent moon turned on its side. “You’re about to have much bigger problems.”

Dipper finally lurched into action, searching wildly for a way out like a frantic animal fleeing from a forest fire. He scrambled towards the stream, favoring one knee as he crawled. Maybe if he could remember one of the spells he’d been memorizing from the journal, he could put up a temporary barrier at the water’s edge. He wasn’t great with magic, and he’d been meaning to ask Ford about it the first chance he got, but right now it was do or die. If he could just make it far enough ahead to give him time to –

An embarrassingly high-pitched scream tore free of his throat as two arms looped around his waist and cinched tightly, lifting him almost completely off the ground. Dipper kicked and flailed desperately. His fist made satisfying contact with skin, high on Bill’s cheekbone, only to slip a little too far. Dipper’s knuckles felt cold and damp, and he looked to see part of his fingers gone, lost on the other side of Bill’s triangular eye socket, somewhere in insipid depths of pure darkness.

“Stop that,” Bill hissed, trying to lean away from Dipper’s clawing hand without letting go of him. “I’m not going to –”

Whatever he wasn’t going to do, it was drowned out by Dipper’s cry of revulsion as he jerked his fist back. His fingers seemed to be attached, but tingling. Bill seemed equally disturbed by whatever having someone stick a hand in your not-eye-socket was supposed to feel like. Agitated, he blinked his one eye several times.

In an attempt to slip out of his grip while he was distracted, Dipper wriggled his shoulders and hit them back against Bill’s chest, to no avail. His struggling dislodged the journal from his vest, and it fell open on the ground, loose papers fluttering away with the breeze. There were no less than 10 of them, filled front to back with his messy scrawl of studies, observations, and inferences, all his work, all the notes he’d recorded in Piedmont and when he arrived back in Gravity Falls.

Dipper howled, kicking and thrashing with renewed frenzy, no longer trying to just worm his way out of Bill’s arms but intentionally aiming to hurt the demon. Rage and terror welled up in him as one, spilling over from his eyes in hot tears. Everything came flooding back, the memories he had been trying to suppress for a year now: living on the streets of the ruined town, being alone without any other sign of human life for several days, hiding from eyeball bats, trying to avoid being made into a snack, choking on the noxious air, staring up at the Fearamid and the orange-tinted sky without any hope, without his sister, without his family, without knowing if anybody else was alive in the world at all.

It was only fair that he gave some of that back to Bill now. He didn’t care how likely it was that he'd get blasted into nothingness in the process. The only thing that mattered was that this was the monster who had ripped him apart from Mabel the first time, and Dipper couldn’t let him do it again. Besides, a human body was much easier to punch than a triangle.

He was still screaming bloody murder, even though his voice had gone hoarse. He twisted and jerked violently, striking Bill wherever he could reach. Bill clamped a hand over his mouth to shut him up, so Dipper chomped down on it. Bill didn’t seemed fazed. He snorted and tried to extricate his hand, and when that didn’t work, he unceremoniously dumped Dipper on the ground beneath the willow tree.

Dipper righted himself in time to see Bill pick up the journal. He grabbed for Bill’s legs, but the lunge only strained Dipper’s ankle. Bill pranced back, weighing the journal with the spine resting easily in his hand. Dipper expected to see it go up in flames any minute now, just like the ones before it. Instead, Bill flipped through the empty pages, tossed the book back to him, and ran, cackling, to retrieve all the scattered pages on the hillock.

There was nothing Dipper could do. Tears pricked at his eyes again, threatening to trickle down the trails of flaking salt residue the first ones had left on his cheeks. He was so weak, so useless, stuck sitting beneath the tree with an empty book clutched close to him.

It was Weirdmageddon all over again; without Mabel, he hadn’t been able to do a single thing to Bill, he was simply discarded and given to Bill’s minions as a snack because he wasn’t worth the time. Dipper hadn’t been able to stop Bill from destroying the journals then, so what made him think he stood more of a chance now?

Bill had gathered up all the pages, and had even hunted down one that went astray in the trees. His eye ( _eye and half, eye plus a void?_ ) met Dipper’s across the hill, gleaming ominously. He could still burn them, or throw them in the river, or rip them to shreds, and Dipper wouldn't even be able to reach him. He was prepared for all of the above and more, but not for what Bill actually did.

He plopped down in the grass and began to read. Dipper put the journal back in his vest where it belonged, though its actual contents were missing. He had to get those pages back before Bill lost interest in them. With the aid of the willow tree, Dipper stood up and limped slowly towards Bill, expecting to be struck down at any moment. Miraculously, he made it all the way, but what was he supposed to do from there?

Bill didn’t look up, apparently enthralled in whatever he was reading, but he seemed to sense Dipper standing above him and motioned to a place on the grass. Dipper almost laughed. How stupid did Bill think he was?

Dipper put one hand on his hip and tried to lean his weight on the wrong leg. A twinge of pain lanced up from his ankle to his knee. All the blood had dried, but the gash threatened to reopen if he straightened out his leg any more. At this point, he had to sit down, more out of desperation than by choice. If Bill wasn’t actively seeking to wear his skin, literally or in terms of possession, Dipper was going to take advantage of it, get the pages of his journal back, and book it out of here the first chance he got.

He took a seat and edged a little closer, decreasing the three-foot distance he’d left between himself and Bill. Bill still didn’t look up from the reading. Dipper shuffled nearer, and leaned over enough to see which page Bill was on. It was the one he’d written about a strange bird he found in Piedmont, with two sharp blue beaks, cannibalistic tendencies, and a disproportionately cute face. His sketch could use some work, and he’d been hoping to get Mabel’s help with that, but… Maybe Ford would have time to teach him instead.

He found himself saying, “These are just rough drafts. I was planning to transfer them over into the journal when I get a chance. If I can have them back, that is.”

“Hm” was Bill’s only reply.

Dipper didn’t even realize just how close he’d been moving until his knee bumped Bill’s. This time, Bill did look at him, one eyebrow raised. Instantly choked up with anxiety again, he retreated several inches, but remained within reach of the pages. He focused on breathing, trying to regain his calm. At least it hadn’t been his injured knee that touched Bill; he had a feeling the demon might not react well to having his nice clothes soiled.

“Okay,” Bill said finally, “Here.”

Dumbfounded, Dipper stared at him without realizing he was meant to accept the neatly arranged papers, so Bill dropped them on his lap instead. Dipper’s hands were shaking a little as he opened his journal, made sure all the pages were accounted for, and tucked them in the inside cover. The book was a little scuffed up, but no worse for the wear. He really couldn’t believe it. Had Bill just done something nice for him? Had Bill been interested in what Dipper wrote?

He wasn’t at all sure how to react, so he went with blunt and confused. “Why would you do that?”

Bill smoothed out his brick-patterned coat and laid back on the grass, crossing his arms behind his head. “Well, as I was saying before you so rudely decided to try to defend yourself, I’m not here to hurt you. In fact it seemed to be the other way around, honestly!” He stuck his bottom lip out in a pout but couldn’t hold it for more than five seconds before his face split into a grin again. “I won’t pluck out your eyeballs, or steal your body, or burn your precious new journal, which is looking pretty snazzy by the way. I’m not here to do anything like that, I promise.”

“Your promises don’t mean much, if our last deal is anything to go by,” Dipper pointed out acidly, before he could stop himself.

He probably shouldn’t have pushed his luck like that, and it wasn’t like he was ungrateful that Bill gave him back his notes, but, despite the uncharacteristic kindness, old wounds still lingered in the back of his mind. Those ran a lot deeper than this scraped knee. No matter what, he couldn’t even think about beginning to fall into Bill’s trap again.

Even being around him was still giving Dipper chills, but the desire to strangle him had faded into a mild, simmering compromise of, _I might be okay with this if he just leaves me alone all summer_. Dipper just wanted to get out of there and fall asleep in his bed and wake up and hope it was all a bad dream and that he’d never have to deal with Bill again. At the same time, he was also too involved at this point to leave without knowing the answers to at least some of his questions. He knew better than to expect an apology of any sort, but he did want an explanation. Bill had to be up to something.

If he was, though, he was doing a good job of concealing it. At the accusation, his pupil narrowed, catlike despite the appearance of the human iris around it. “I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re talking about, Pine Tree.”

Dipper flinched. “Stop calling me that.”

In a way, maybe it was good that Bill was back, if only so Dipper could work up the courage to say that to his face. He’d needed to for a long time, in hopes of getting it to stop echoing around in his head when he was trying to fall asleep or when he was alone. Closure, in a way. He wasn’t an object, or a pawn, or a puppet, he wasn’t Bill’s _Pine Tree_ , and if he believed it hard enough then maybe it wouldn’t keep haunting him the way it did.

Bill said nothing, but sat up, challenging Dipper to hold his gaze.

Dipper looked down at his hands and busied them with the journal, leafing through his notes until he stopped on the page depicting the black triangle with limbs and a hat. The original was blood-splattered; he just had to make a new version because it was burned into his memory. He’d read his great-uncle’s third journal cover to cover so many times that he could probably copy most of it, actually, but he wanted this page, if nothing else, to be a warning and a reminder in his own journal.

“I have a name,” he said quietly. “Maybe you never bothered with it because I outlived my usefulness to you once I saw through your lies, and maybe that’s the reason you barely even looked at me during your apocalypse, but I do have a name. If you’re going to harass me all summer, you’re going to call me Dipper.”

“Dipper,” Bill repeated, rolling the name around on his tongue. “Sounds weird, but whatever floats your boat.”

Dipper looked at him incredulously. Was it that easy? Where was the mocking, the crazed laughter, the fire and brimstone? Why was Bill being so _nice_ , especially after being defeated last summer? How had he even been able to come back?

There was only one possible reason he’d been so kind; he had to be looking for something out of Dipper. But what? There were a thousand questions running through his mind at once, but he wasn’t sure how safe it would be to ask any of them. Bill had been astonishingly placid so far, by bloodthirsty dream demon standards. Knowing him, that was likely to change in an instant.

But if Dipper was stuck here, he figured he might as well take his chances.

He dared to glance sideways at Bill, whose posture had relaxed again. His legs, clad in black slacks, were stretched out, feet crossed elegantly at the ankles, and his gloved hands rested on the ground to either side of him. He didn’t seem to be focused on anything in particular, simply staring off into the flickering lights over the flowers, maybe lazily tracking a few fireflies until their deaths.

Dipper decided to go for broke. “What are you up to, Bill? What have you _been_ up to? And how exactly are you here, alive, and also apparently human? Why did you come to find me? And if you were hunting me down, why haven’t you killed me by now?”

“Too many questions.” Bill tipped his head to the side, rested it against a lifted shoulder, and smirked. “You should know by now that I don’t give information for free.”

“Silly me, I forgot, your business model is tricking people into deals by promising them all the secrets of the universe and leaving it open-ended enough for you to get whatever you want without ever even fulfilling your end. Remember when you hijacked my body? Remember when you promised Mabel summer would last forever?”

“You are one crabby flesh sack, you know that, kid? Those were good times! You can’t hold a grudge forever, especially not if you’re trying to get anything from me. Being an ingrate ain’t gonna do it for you, Pi–” Bill stopped himself just in time. He really was dedicated to his act, wasn’t he? “So, _Dipper_ , I’ll give you one solid freebie, because I like you. Pick any one of your questions, but only one. After that, your leverage is gone, and you’ll need a deal if you want more.”

Dipper opened his mouth, then closed it smartly. He had to make this count. He considered trying to string everything into one long question, but he doubted Bill would accept that. There were several things he might be able to figure out on his own, or with Ford’s help, like how exactly Bill had freed himself from Stan’s mind, but there was one thing only Bill could tell him.

“Why are you here now?” Dipper asked carefully, but soon forgot his one question limit and tried to elaborate, “What do you want? You’re not looking to take over the world with your weirdness again, are you?”

“One, I said _one_ , but fine. No, I’m not here to bring back Weirdmageddon. As much fun as that would be, I’d need a new Rift to break to generate enough power for that, not to mention somebody more gullible than Shooting Star. What I want this time, what I need, is a soul.”

Dipper wasn’t expecting such a straightforward answer; for a moment, he feared Bill could be lying. Except, he had just admitted that he couldn’t cause another apocalypse, and he wouldn’t do that if he cared about concealing that kind of plan. The soul part was believable, if vague.

“So, that’s it? You won’t answer if I ask you anything else?”

“I never said I wouldn’t answer.” Bill turned to face him, grinning wide as the Cheshire cat, blue fire dancing on his palm and in his eye. “But if I do, it will come with a price. Just a small favor, maybe.”

“The last time you asked me for a small favor, I had to manipulate a sock puppet to speak to my own sister. In other words, that’s a no.” Just facing the temptation of the offer made Dipper uneasy. He leaned away from the cold, crackling fire, trying to think of a way to work the situation to his advantage.  “It makes me wonder why you’re so reluctant to answer me, though. Is it just that you don’t know everything?”

The demon smiled wryly. With a flick of his wrist, the flames, the same hue as the fireflies floating around, disappeared. “You’re learning to think like me, I see. But you know you can’t beat me with mind games, I’m the master of those. I know everything I need to know, which is to say, everything. The date of your birth, your death, your reincarnation. I even know the date of your conception! I have a memory of your first cells joining together in your mother’s womb if you want to see it.”

“Um, no, really, I think I’m good!” Dipper assured, shuddering. Bill really was a creep, even if he was joking. With how candidly serious his face was, it was hard to tell. “Why were you watching me even before I was born? If I didn’t know better, I’d say you seem a little obsessed. Then again, I wasn’t worth all that much to you after you found your other pawns.”

“You have no room to talk about obsession.” Bill leaned over to tap the cover of Dipper’s journal. “Don’t think I didn’t see those pages from your uncle’s journals. Rather impressive that you managed to copy them from memory, word for word. If I’d known that you had every bit of that knowledge up in that brilliant noggin’ of yours, I would have had to burn you along with the journals.”

“Oh, so now I’m brilliant? I actually could have thrown some unforeseen wrench in your plans?”

“Careful, Dipper, your jealousy is showing. That’s what you’re still so bitter over, isn’t it? It’s not about the possession or whatever ‘atrocities’ I committed, it’s about you feeling like I forgot about you. Ha! That is precious.”

Something twisted in Dipper’s gut. “You’re wrong,” he snapped, and that alone was probably enough to convict him.

“So, I may have had bigger things to worry about at the time, like your uncle. He’s less fun than I remember him being, though. Guess old age does that to you humans, dulls your humor, makes you cranky, whatever. You can have one more answer for free, and you don’t even have to ask the question because I know it’s on your mind! There’s no need to worry, you’ll always be my favorite, Pine—” Bill frowned, looking annoyed. “—Dipper. Pine Dipper. Can I call you that instead?”

“Don’t.”

Dipper inhaled deeply, and sighed it out, gazing down at the glimmering stream beyond the willow tree’s roots. He couldn’t stand thinking about things like this right now. Bill might have just dragged a truth out of him that he never even thought existed. But that _had_ been what it was about from the start, hadn’t it? What drew him to Bill was the promise of knowledge, the intrigue in the mysterious monster, and the fact that Bill paid attention to him and treated him like he was intelligent.

And when they met again, it was like Bill had moved on, like Dipper was worthless again. Not that he had ever wanted to help Bill, not after discovering his true nature, but being discarded so easily had hurt at least half as much as losing his entire family for those few terrifying days.

Wasn’t he not thinking about this now? Right. Save it for when he could cry himself back to sleep after a nightmare.

“Dipper,” Bill said seriously, “Look at me. You know what I am, you know I’ll destroy anything that stands between me and what I want. That was nothing personal, believe it or not.”

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

“You humans, so high maintenance... You’re looking for an apology, aren’t you? Just saying that you really are the most interesting kid I’ve ever made a deal with won’t cut it?”

Dipper hated himself for starting to believe Bill really meant what he said. Obstinately, he shook his head, desperately trying not to acknowledge, even to himself, how much better that one little compliment made him feel. Was his self-confidence really so low that he needed validation from the demon who’d made his life such hell before?

“Tell you what, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll spend this whole summer with you!”

“Oh, sounds like so much fun,” Dipper said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “I’m sure I’ll love learning how to hide bodies and watching you torture animals or whatever.”

“Yeesh, what exactly do you think I do all the time? Not that, that’s for sure. I was actually considering teaching you magic.”

If Dipper were a dog, his ears would have perked right up at that. He couldn’t help it; insatiable thirst for knowledge wasn’t something that even doubt or fear could quench.

“Besides, it’s not like you’ll have anything else to do with your time. Shooting Star doesn’t seem to be hanging around you too much lately. Busy girl.”

“I don’t want to talk about her.” Dipper’s upturning mood was ruined again, just like that. He chewed at his bottom lip, hid his journal back in his vest, and tried to stand with a grunt. “I should be on my way home, not hanging around in the woods with a creepy –”

He struggled to put any weight on his bad leg. Predictably, it gave way beneath him. Unbalanced, he fell right into Bill’s lap, but at least Bill made an attempt to catch him. One of his arms ended up beneath Dipper’s knees, the other supporting his back. Dipper peered up at him with a gulp. This was way too close for comfort, and he sort of wanted to run away, but the instinct to scream or cry had lost its hold.

“I won’t make another deal with you,” he swore, promising himself more than Bill, “No matter what.”

Bill didn’t respond immediately, but reached forward to clamp his hand around Dipper’s sprained ankle. Dipper cocked a hesitant fist back, ready to punch Bill in his not-eye void again if necessary, but the slim, dexterous digits of Bill’s other hand circled Dipper’s forearm and brought it down. His fingers were so long, and Dipper’s wrist so small, that he could easily touch forefinger to thumb around it.

“Let me fix you up. Free of charge.”

Dipper wasn’t given time to protest before Bill lifted him out of his lap and laid him down on the grass. Bill repositioned his hand on Dipper’s ankle, the other one on his bloody knee, and both began to glow faintly blue from underneath. A strange wave flowed beneath Dipper’s skin, with the consistency of lukewarm water. When it passed, he found he could roll his ankle properly. Bill let go of his knee, and the skin was sealed over, fresh and pinkish-white, without so much as a scar. Dipper’s mouth hung agape for a solid thirty seconds.

“I didn’t know you could…are your powers not just limited to dreams anymore? Is that just regular magic? Is – is it something you can teach me?”

The notion was both intriguing and worrying. Bill Cipher in a human form spelled catastrophe, no matter which way he sliced it. Just how much could Bill do with that physical body? How did he get it in the first place? Dipper hoped Great-Uncle Ford could help him get to the bottom of this. He didn’t even think twice about telling Ford everything he knew about Bill’s comeback; he had to, to keep his family safe, no matter what.

Bill didn’t stop there. With tenderness that might have been forced, he touched each individual cut on Dipper’s face and arms, pretending not to hear his query. He picked leaves and twigs out of the boy’s messy brown hair, and Dipper couldn’t help but laugh because it reminded him of those animal documentaries, when the monkeys would groom one another.

“Good as new,” Bill proclaimed, looking all too pleased with himself.

Dipper worried he might have been lured into some roundabout deal without realizing it. Bill probably could have used that magic to do something else to his leg, like leave it open to possession. But then, it would be only that one leg, so that would be weird and not necessarily effective. What would Bill do, walk him off a cliff? With what Bill had admitted earlier, about needing a soul, it seemed unlikely that he wanted Dipper dead. Unless he could still take Dipper’s soul even in death. In which case, Dipper was screwed, but, in all fairness, he’d guessed that the minute he recognized Bill.

Still, when he stood up and tested his leg, it supported his weight just fine. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, and everything didn’t hurt anymore. If anything, he felt rejuvenated, and ready to fight if Bill decided to try anything now. The demon remained on the ground, watching him passively.

It was almost hard to see that he really was a demon, with his fair hair hiding his unnatural eye socket and his mouth, for once, in what seemed to be a regular old smile. His suit still made him look ridiculously out of place in the woods, but at least he had a sense of fashion, which was more than Dipper could say for himself. It made him think that Bill might actually get along with Mabel pretty well, if they could get past the apocalypse thing.

Movement distracted Dipper from his thoughts. Bill planted his cane in the ground and got to his feet, his coat swirling around his calves. On the outside, it was yellow, like his spiffy vest, but the inside seemed to have a strange texture, with millions of tiny silver dots twinkling throughout. _Stars_ , Dipper realized. That was actually pretty amazing.

“I suppose you should be heading home,” Bill said, and held out his hand, “I’ll see you around, Dipper.”

Dipper looked down at Bill’s extended hand, and then up at his face, and laughed nervously. “You’re a funny guy, but I’m not that naïve anymore. I don’t trust you _that_ much.”

Bill withdrew his hand, but he didn’t look disappointed. If anything, his grin said he’d gotten exactly what he wanted. “But you do trust me.”

Dipper was going to let that one go unanswered. Even if he said yes, he didn’t think it would be a whole truth; Bill’s praise meant more to him than he’d expected it to, but that didn’t mean he was going to start trusting him again just like that. Nothing would change the fact that Bill was a demon. He’d been a manipulative backstabber in the past, and would likely continue to be in the future. The best bet was to stay on his good side, if Dipper had no choice but to deal with him.

“Listen, if you’re looking to get that soul you need, from _me_ , you can forget about it. And you’d better stay away from my family, too. And don’t even think about trying to get me to somehow extract somebody’s soul for you. And –”

“Calm down, kid. I knew how you’d feel about that, and I don’t need your help. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t value it, should I win you over.”

“In your dreams,” Dipper snarked, sticking his tongue out at Bill.

“In _yours_ ,” Bill quipped back at him, “I hope you don’t mind me paying you a few visits.”

Dipper was already across the five convenient stepping stones in the stream. He looked back once to roll his eyes, but he was smiling. Keeping his gaze set on the far end of the hollow, where he’d be able to get out, he said, “I’m never going to make another deal with you, Bill, but…thank you.”

Bill stood in place for a moment and watched the fireflies die, blowing at the ashes when they neared his face. They were pointless bugs with only a week-long lifespan, native to Gravity Falls. When they reached maturity, they mated, and one pair could produce more than a hundred eggs. After, they erupted into blue flames for five seconds of glory. All that in the span of seven days. Asinine, but fascinating.

The kid was out of sight, likely circling back around the rim of the hollow. He could probably find his way home on his own, but a triangular shadow trailed him all the way back to the safety of the Mystery Shack, just to make sure. It vanished when he stopped on the porch to look back at the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, a reboot! I've procrastinated on this for far too long, but I want to be happier with my writing here, and I think this is probably a big improvement. This has been in the works for a while, because when I started this fic, I actually didn't have that great of a grasp on the characters, and there hadn't been as many episodes featuring Bill, and, obviously, Gravity Falls didn't have a concrete ending. Now that the canonical things are all worked out, I think it's a lot easier to build a better story. Also, I got a lot of constructive criticism (shoutout to la-critique.tumblr.com), and I've made some big changes, both style-wise and plot-wise. Hope you guys like it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody loves a good circus, right? At least, everybody who isn't Dipper, because everybody else doesn't have reason to believe the ringleader is out to get them. Then again, maybe the only person out to get him is the one he's held in his own mind, not the one whose lap makes a pretty good place for napping.

It was already noon by the time Dipper woke up. He’d stayed up even later than usual, writing in his notes about the encounter from the night before, about the fireflies and the secret hollow but mostly about Bill. _Was all that even real?_ he wondered. Part of him hoped it wasn’t, but an equal, if not greater, part hoped it was. At least he could look forward to having something to do this summer, or maybe he’d have someone to keep him company while he explored the rest of the woods.

Wow. He must have hit his head in that fall he took. This was a _demon_ he was thinking of. There was no way Bill would give up his career of making deals and causing mayhem for a whole summer just to hang around some kid. Admittedly, he did offer to make it up to Dipper by doing just that. As long as Bill didn’t cause too much trouble, Dipper didn’t care whether he saw him or not for the rest of summer break.

Dipper stretched in bed, yawned, and shook his head to try to clear his thoughts. The less he dwelled on Bill’s return right now, the better. Several pages were scattered across his bed, and his journal was under him, digging into his back. He sat up to gather and organize everything. He only had to skim the fresh writing to know that he hadn’t dreamed up everything that happened last night. Certain phrases stood out, like _void in place of right eye_ and _snappy choice of dress (duh)_ and _wants a sole???_

Sole? Had he been trying to write ‘soul’ or was Bill legitimately after a piece of a shoe? Whatever his scattered late-night ramblings meant, he knew one thing for sure. Bill was back, with a new body to boot. First things first, he had to tell Ford.

Before his feet touched the floor, Dipper paused, looking across the room. His sister’s bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in. She’d been here when he got home, but he supposed listening to him talk to himself while he wrote for hours had discouraged her from sleeping up here. She hadn’t even said anything about it to him. Weird.

Mabel walked in to find her brother hanging halfway off his bed and searching for something under it. At the sound of the opening door, Dipper looked up, holding some rogue loose-leaf pages. Speak of the devil. (No, wait, that was Bill.)

“Morning, Mabel.”

“Morning.”

Dipper winced at the lack of warmth in her voice. “I’m sorry if I bothered you last night.”

“It’s fine.”

“Is something wrong? Was it…was it something else I did or said?”

Mabel sat down at the foot of his bed. Today, her sweater was multi-colored and festive, with ‘WELCOME HOME’ stitched across the front, but it didn’t seem to match her mood. Tentatively, Dipper put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

“Talk to me, Mabel, please?”

She didn’t look up at him, but she said, “I’m just afraid that now that Grunkle Ford’s in town, you’re gonna be spending all your time with him.”

“Great-Uncle Ford is here?” Dipper asked, lighting up immediately. At Mabel’s hard expression, he coughed and tried to put that thought aside. “Hey, we already dealt with that before. I still wouldn’t take that apprenticeship even if he offered it again, okay?” Quietly, he added, “Anyways, you were the one who ran off and left me alone on our first day back.”

Mabel’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t see Candy or Grenda for a whole year, Dipper! What was I supposed to do, tell them to wait another week until I could find time for them?”

“Fine, that’s fair.” Dipper raised his hands in surrender. “I guess I’m just worried about the same thing happening with you, hanging out with your friends and having no time to hang out with me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, today is our real first full day back, so let’s start fresh.” Mabel grabbed Dipper’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Hi, I’m Mabel, nice to meet you!”

Dipper smiled and shook his head. “You’re ridiculous. I’m going to get dressed.”

“I’m not ridiculous, I just told you, I’m Mabel.”

Dipper laughed, pushed his feet up under the covers to reach Mabel’s side, and tickled her until she was giggling as well. While he dug under his blanket for the socks he’d lost in the night, she got up and headed for the door.

“Wait, so, the Grunkles _are_ here already, right?”

“Yep, they’re hanging out in the kitchen.”

“I’ll be down there in a minute.”

“Okie dokie arti-bro-kie.”

As fast as he could, Dipper got dressed, made sure everything was back in place in his journal, and carried it with him downstairs. He wasn’t prepared for the rush of emotion that went through his chest when he saw Grunkle Stan being his usual old self, bickering lightheartedly with his twin and chatting with Soos about how business in the Mystery Shack. The kitchen was a little crowded, with both Soos and Melody as honorary members of the Pines family. Wendy was supposed to show up later, too, even though Soos had given her the day off.

Dipper hung back for a moment and tried to contain the joy bubbling up in him. He couldn’t blame Mabel for wanting to be with Candy and Grenda right away when she got here; he was pretty sure this was how she must have felt when she saw them, a burst of happiness and a twist of relief deep inside at the mere sight of family and friends they had been away from for a whole year. Getting out in the woods of Gravity Falls yesterday had felt like coming home, but this felt like _being_ home.

“What are you waiting for?” Mabel, laughing. “Come on, bromine!”

“Dude, you look like you’re about to cry, you gonna be okay dawg?” Soos, with genuine concern.

“Suck it up, kid, I missed you just as much, but you don’t see me getting all teary-eyed, do you?” Grunkle Stan, gruffly, getting all teary-eyed.

Dipper ran to hug him, and Stan dragged Ford and Mabel in, too. Crushed together, the younger set of twins held on tight to their great-uncles, laughing with happy tears in their eyes. Above their heads, the older pair exchanged a warm smile.

Standing awkwardly on the fringe with his fiancé, Soos suggested, “Uh, group hug?”

“Yeah, now’s the time for a group hug, Soos,” Stan said, with all the patience of a father coaxing a jump from a son who didn’t know if he’d be caught. “Get in here already. You too, Mel – Melanie?”

Mabel punched Grunkle Stan in the chest lightly and shook her head at him. “Melody,” she corrected, “Mel-o-dee.”

“Cut me some slack, I’ve been stuck on a ship with this old geezer for the better part of a year,” Stan said defensively, elbowing his brother, “He’s been driving me crazy, my mind’s not what it used to be.”

 _That’s probably more related to the memory gun,_ Dipper thought, but he kept it to himself. He wasn’t sure exactly how much Ford had deemed safe to remind Stan of when it came to that incident – but then again, Bill was definitely out of his head now, right? Either way, it wasn’t important right now, and he let it shift to the back of his mind when Soos, pulling Melody, barreled into the hug, leaving Mabel and Dipper completely surrounded by the adults.

“Grunkle Stan, for once I think Soos smells better than you!” Mabel turned back and forth to sniff both of them, wrinkling her nose. “Yep, old pizza smell definitely wins over salty seaweed smell.”

They all started laughing again, holding on to each other for support, and stayed that way for a long time, until the twins began to get a little claustrophobic. Soos and the Grunkles settled down at the kitchen table, while Melody went to order a pizza for everyone. Mabel had climbed up in Grunkle Stan’s lap and started braiding his hair, which had grown out considerably, hanging down the back of his head under the red toboggan hat he’d taken to wearing. She gasped, plucked a white hair out, and proceeded to tease Stan about his old age, and about how he was rocking his new mullet. He got her back by complaining that she was getting too big to sit his lap, even as he let her stay and play with his hair.

Ford and Dipper caught each other smiling fondly at their respective twins. They turned to one another, each searching for something to say in greeting. Dipper wished he were as good at starting conversations as his sister was, but at least he could trust that once he and Ford got going about a new mystery or whatever else Mabel called ‘nerdy’, nothing could derail them.

“Do you –”

“How –”

They both stopped and laughed.

“You first,” Ford encouraged.

“Oh, no, I was just going to ask if you still have your DD&MD dice. What were you going to say?”

“I was going to ask you how school’s been this year. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to start,” Ford admitted, rubbing the back of his head.

Dipper couldn’t help but grin. It always felt good to know how much he was like Ford, in some ways, and he was glad to have someone with similar interests to talk to again.

“It was all right. I did well in all my classes, but most of them weren’t very challenging. I spent a lot more time on the new journal you gave me than I did on schoolwork. I haven’t actually written in the journal yet, but I’ve been keeping notes about everything I want to record so that I can rewrite them and make it look better, like yours did.” Dipper dug the journal in question out of his vest and proudly presented it to Ford. “I was even finding anomalies in Piedmont, ones I’d never seen here! I still think you were right about the trend though, that the weirdness is centered around Gravity Falls.”

“Right, right,” Ford said, nodding to himself as he flipped through the pages, “But we’re still no closer to knowing _why_. I was hoping my discoveries near the Arctic Circle would connect somehow, make it all make sense, but… Dipper, what’s this?”

Ford held up the loose-leaf page where Dipper had written about his encounter with Bill, where he’d even drawn a crude sketch. He cringed, partially because of the drawing, and partially because he had completely forgotten he’d have to talk to Ford about this. It was a conversation that had to happen sooner than later. Dipper didn’t know where he was even supposed to begin, though. And with Stan in the room, he didn’t want to risk saying too much.

Tugging his great-uncle by his coat, Dipper led him into the living room. It looked a little different, reminding him that Grunkle Stan wasn’t a permanent resident of the Mystery Shack anymore. A couch had taken the place of his comfortable old armchair in front of the TV, but the chair hadn’t been moved very far from it. There were some new additions that made the place look a little more homely, like the tall lamp in the corner, and the new carpeting and wallpaper.

Dipper paced for a minute before he took a seat on the arm of Grunkle Stan’s chair and held his hands out for the journal. Ford gave it to him willingly, but there was a dark cloud over his face while he waited for Dipper to explain. Holding the journal gave Dipper a sort of comfort, and thumbing through its blank pages had become something of a nervous habit.

Great-Uncle Ford had every right to be apprehensive, or even angry, about Bill Cipher’s return, in a human body or otherwise. Whatever Dipper did, he didn’t want to upset him by saying the wrong thing. Thinking about what Bill did to Ford made Dipper angrier than thinking about what Bill did to _him_. No matter what, Dipper couldn’t start defending Bill. The dream demon may have been playing nice last night, but that was no reason to trust him. He wanted somebody’s soul, for crying out loud! Dipper couldn’t believe how ridiculously blind he’d become in such a short period of time – there was no way he wanted anything to do with Bill this summer.

“Dipper?” Ford prompted. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”

“I… Last night, I had a, a dream,” Dipper said, already kicking himself for it as the words left his mouth, “And Bill was in it. He was like I described there, and what I tried to draw. It was like a human form. The thing about this, um, dream, is that it wasn’t like one where he was actually there. I could tell because everything didn’t turn gray like it usually does. I thought maybe it still meant something, so I wrote it down, but it might’ve been just a crazy dream. I’ve had plenty of nightmares about him before, it was probably just another one of those.”

Ford’s expression slowly melted from guarded anger ( _and fear?_ Dipper thought) to sympathy. “You too, huh? I’m sorry, Dipper. It was all my own stupid fault in the end. If I hadn’t let him trick me to begin with, you would’ve never had to deal with him.”

“No, you can’t blame yourself for everything. I’m sure he could’ve gotten to me one way or another, and maybe Weirdmageddon would have happened no matter what.” Quietly, Dipper asked, “Does that mean you have them too, Great-Uncle Ford?”

Ford sat down in the armchair with a heavy sigh and nodded. “Ever since that day I found out he’d been lying to me the whole time. I barely slept while I was wandering the dimensions – I don’t know if it was because the places I visited were unsettling, because I was afraid Bill would come after me, because Bill was just haunting my thoughts, or some combination of the three. And you can imagine after Weirdmageddon, well…that was only more nightmare fuel.”

Dipper had never heard him sound so vulnerable or so open. In that moment, he realized it wasn’t the Author, his idol, he was talking to. It was Stanford Pines, his great-uncle, just a man who had witnessed many things and who had been scarred some place deep inside. He deserved the truth, didn’t he? Dipper should have told him, but if he lost his nerve now, how was he supposed to explain why he didn’t tell the real story in the first place? He wasn’t even sure why himself.

“Great-Uncle Ford?” he asked hesitantly. “It was just another nightmare, but, just in case, nothing happened with Grunkle Stan while you were away, right? How much does he know about what happened during Weirdmageddon?”

Ford raised a hand to scratch at his chin. “Well, I had a reactor on board the ship that I designed to trace anomalies and indicate the level of weirdness in a given area, and it broke down one time while Stanley was nearby. He passed out on the spot, and I almost thought it was going to kill him, or worse, that it would draw Bill out of him. There was blue energy coming out of the machine that reminded me of his fire, but it seems like that must have been a coincidence.

“Stanley came back around within a day, and he was fine after a few cans of that meat that he always carries around with him. ‘Preparing for the apocalypse,’ he says. I don’t know if he knows it already happened. I haven’t made any huge efforts to jog his memory in that regard, out of fear of bringing the wrong pieces of his mind back to the surface. If Bill had managed to take over him somehow, I don’t know what I would have done. Instead, I focused on helping him remember things about our youth, and things about you and your sister. The scrapbook she gave me really helped. Eventually, he was able to tell me about the things _I_ had missed. He never stopped talking about you and Mabel. I think it’s safe to say that his memory is back to 95% overall, but everything surrounding Bill is still hazy or nonexistent, and it’s best to keep it that way.”

Dipper nodded gravely. He felt guilty, now that he knew more than he was letting on. In actuality, the reactor incident probably _had_ drawn Bill out of Grunkle Stan; Bill was on the loose now, and he could be planning any number of bad things. And if he acted on them, it would definitely be Dipper’s fault for not saying anything. If Bill hurt Great-Uncle Ford, or Grunkle Stan…

“You know, Dipper, I’m somewhat glad Bill tricked you too. I know it sounds bad, but I don’t mean it like that. I mean that it’s, sort of a relief, frankly, to have someone else who went through the same things, and who has to live with that same trauma. Maybe that’s my selfishness talking. I don’t wish those nightmares on you, by any means, but I want you to know that you’re not alone. Because I know I’m not, not anymore. If you ever need someone to go to – you know I’m here now.” Ford’s face hardened into a scowl. “And if Cipher ever shows his face again, or does anything to you kids or my brother, I’ll send him back to Hell, or Flatland, or wherever it is he came from. I built a new quantum destabilizer, and next time I won’t miss.”

“Thanks, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper said, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder, “That means a lot. I’ll tell you if I have any other dreams that might be important.”

“Pizza is here!” Soos yelled, almost like a war cry, from the other room.

Ford smiled, stood up from the chair, and stretched. “I take that to mean it’s time for lunch. And by the way, if those notes are anything to go by, your journal is going to turn out great. Speaking of journals…” He reached inside his coat and halfway revealed a leather-bound book, nostalgically similar to the first set he’d had. “I had to record my findings in the Arctic somewhere, so I made myself a new one. I’ll show it to you later, if you’d like.”

Dipper perked up instantly. “Of course! I’ve been dying to hear about what you learned. Can you tell the others I’ll be there in a minute? I just, need to go to the bathroom.”

When Ford had left the room, Dipper put his head in his hands, all his excitement drained away by dread. Why had he lied to Great-Uncle Ford like that? _Stupid_ , he thought, literally kicking himself this time. The worst thing was that he couldn’t even justify it to himself. He had resolved not to defend Bill. Wasn’t he furious about how much pain Bill had already caused his family? If that was the case, then why wouldn’t he do everything in his power to make sure Bill was stopped now, before it was too late?

 _Because you started to trust him,_ a small voice in his head said, a voice that Dipper had tortured himself with because it didn’t sound like Bill but it was, in a way. It was the Bill that had been built into Dipper’s brain.

Rationalize. He could still undo this and tell Ford the whole truth. Or, he could wait to see what happened. If Bill started acting up, he could tell Ford. If not, maybe Dipper could…could what, get to know him? It sounded horribly corny even to him. But at the same time, much of his time with the monsters of Gravity Falls had been learning about them and coming to understand them, not just defeating them. Was a dream demon really any different, in theory?

So that was his plan. Show Bill the magic of friendship and everything would turn out okay. _Stupid_ , he thought again. Even so, Dipper figured it was worth a shot. Besides, if Bill had wanted to take revenge on the Pines family, wouldn’t he have already come and tried to burn the Mystery Shack down or something?

Dipper sighed, adjusted his hat (he couldn’t wait for Wendy to get here and trade with him again), and went to the kitchen. They had saved him two slices of cheese-and-pineapple pizza, his favorite, but the rest of two boxes were long gone. Between Soos and Grunkle Stan, they probably hadn’t lasted five minutes. There was sauce on Mabel’s chin, and she was jumping up and down, pulling on Stan’s hand.

“Come on, come on, let’s go!”

“Go where?” Dipper asked.

“Well, on our way into town, me and my brother spotted this traveling circus type deal nearby. Seems like everybody’s there to see the show, so I figured you and Mabel might want to go. Ha! Made a rhyme there.”

“You’re welcome to stay here with me, Dipper,” Ford put in, “I’m going to be down in the basement – assuming it’s still free for my use?” He looked at Soos and Melody somewhat anxiously.

“It’s all yours. We didn’t want to mess with anything,” Melody explained.

“Excellent. I’ll have to check on all my equipment and make sure it’s still shipshape. I can show you my new journal while we’re down there?” Ford suggested.

Torn, Dipper looked from him to Mabel’s expectant, hopeful face. “Ah, sorry, Great-Uncle Ford, maybe next time?”

To his credit, Ford did his best not to act disappointed, and he didn’t try to convince Dipper to stay. “Next time, definitely. Have fun, you three. Stanley, don’t be a bad influence.”

“Me, a bad influence? What gave you that idea?” Insulted, Stan shook his head and put his arms around Dipper and Mabel, ushering them out to the car. “Come on, kids. Hey, you’re almost old enough to drive now, aren’t you? What say we bust out those blindfolds again and see how well you do?”

Mabel ended up sitting in Grunkle Stan’s lap, gleefully controlling the steering wheel, with a little helpful guidance. In the passenger seat, Dipper covered his eyes and tried not think about how illegal this was. He feared for the day when Mabel got her permit. It was a good thing nobody else was on the road; they must have all already been at the circus, like Grunkle Stan said.

Dipper peeked out between his fingers to watch the two of them. It was good to see them having fun, and it was even better that Stan had remembered that little detail from way back at the beginning of their first summer together, when he took them to the lake for the opening day of fishing season. At the time, Dipper had felt guilty for choosing to go off on a monster hunt over spending time with Grunkle Stan. The hunt was a dead end, anyways. But the memory of climbing into Stan’s dingy old fishing boat and spending the rest of the afternoon there filled him with warmth, and Dipper smiled, resting his head against the window.

Miraculously, they made it to their destination without getting arrested or mowing down any pedestrians. How the Phillips’ Traveling Circus cropped up on the edge of town overnight was a small miracle in itself, though it did seem slightly suspicious. While Mabel and Stan got out of the car and made a beeline for a fire-eating sideshow act, Dipper trailed behind. He’d never seen a traveling circus before, so it was difficult to distinguish danger from intentional bizarreness. He wasn’t charmed by the fake mystique of the crystal ball and tarot reading stall Mabel dragged him into, or fooled by the classic sawing-someone-in-half shtick, but he was glad Mabel was having fun.

Then they ran into Candy and Grenda, and his chances of spending quality time with his sister went right out the window. All three of them spent a good five minutes jumping up and down and talking about things they’d seen, often repeating each other. Grunkle Stan had gone off to find the concessions stand and probably swindle the guy working there, leaving Dipper alone with the girls.

“There’s this cool show about to start inside the tent,” Grenda said, loudly. She said everything loudly. “Come on, let’s go!”

“There is supposed to be knife-throwing!” Candy added with far too much excitement as she adjusted her glasses.

To her credit, she actually seemed to notice Dipper, and waved to him briefly before Mabel and Grenda grabbed each of her hands and practically swung her off the ground as they ran for the line of what seemed like the entire town populace migrating to the tent. Grunkle Stan came up to Dipper a moment later, loaded down with bags of popcorn and a stick of cotton candy for everybody.

“In there,” Dipper sighed, jerking his thumb toward the red and white pinstriped tent.

Grunkle Stan chomped down on a clump of blue cotton candy and nodded, allowing Dipper to lead the way. Just before they entered the noisy arena, he nudged Dipper’s shoulder with his own and said, “No need to look so down, kiddo. You two learned from me and Sixer’s mistake, remember? She’s not gonna leave you behind.”

Dipper forced a smile. The fact that Stan was still calling his brother Sixer was evidence enough that he didn’t remember a thing about Bill – it was always subtle, but Dipper saw Ford flinch every time. Sixer was to Ford as Pine Tree was to Dipper. But Stan couldn’t possibly understand that. He had no way of knowing his twin’s childhood nickname had been corrupted by a dream demon. Though Bill had probably had some way of knowing it was something that would always stick with Ford. After all that, the trauma both he and Great-Uncle Ford suffered, how could Dipper still think he could make some kind of peace with Bill? This wasn’t exactly a forgive-and-forget kind of thing.

He was too upset with himself, and with Mabel, and with everything in general, to even laugh when Grunkle Stan spotted Gideon across the stadium and made a joke about his powdered hair. The girls giggled from behind their cones of cotton candy, and Dipper began to wish he was anywhere else.

Out in the ring, a parade of juggling clowns ambled by, preceded by three swaying elephants. Dipper wrinkled his nose against the animal smell, strong enough to make his eyes water as he squinted at the jugglers. He’d never trusted clowns, but these ones seemed harmless enough, with their honking red noses and their exaggerated clumsiness. Drummers marched along behind them, wearing outfits that had to be stifling in the heat. They all aligned themselves in formation and moved to the background to make room for the next acts.

There were trapeze dancers, tightrope walkers, clowns on unicycles, clowns on stilts, and basically clowns everywhere. Some actually acted as comedians and delivered a few lines that really did make them sound like clowns. Not one of them got a laugh out of Dipper. The air was warm from too many people crowded into one space, and filled with the noise of them chattering and crunching on peanuts and popcorn. Everyone hooted and hollered for the simplest magic tricks, Mabel and co. included, and Dipper had to struggle not to roll his eyes. He wished Great-Uncle Ford were here with him to discuss the mechanics of the illusions, to help him debunk them all, to commend him on his observations. Better yet, he wished he’d just chosen to stay home and pore over the new journal from the Arctic.

But both of those options were out of the question. The next best thing would be to catch up on the sleep he lost last night. Dipper had just started to doze off on Grunkle Stan’s shoulder when the crack of a bullwhip brought him to attention. Rubbing his eyes, he looked down into the ring to find a man in a yellow coat standing on a pedestal, arms spread grandly.

 _Aren’t most ringmasters’ coats red?_ Naturally, the color reminded him of a demon who had no business being here. Dipper wanted to pass it off as mere coincidence, but if there was anything he’d learned in this town, it was that there was no such thing as coincidence. Everything had a meaning.

Dipper reached over to steal Mabel’s drink to wake him up. (He was pretty sure she’d made Mabel Juice on the spot and mixed it with soda.) There was so much caffeine in one sip that he genuinely worried if he’d be able to sleep at all for a long time. It did the trick, though, and left him alert to watch out for any other ‘coincidences’.

The only comfort was that the body was all wrong, portly and stout as opposed to the tall, gangly physique Bill had adopted for what was potentially his own human form, or at least the form he’d possessed. Could he possess multiple people at the same time? Another answer Dipper would probably have to sell his soul for. He had too many questions and not enough souls. He made a mental note to tell Bill that the exchange rate sucked.

Surely that wasn’t Bill down there. If it were, he would have set the tent on fire by now and left everyone to burn alive inside. But the more Dipper tried to convince himself he was being too skeptical, the more the suspicion gnawed at him.

“Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and allow me to officially welcome you to the rest of our show!”

His voice boomed through a megaphone he carried. Nothing about it sounded off, but Dipper wasn’t sure that was always a guaranteed sign of possession – after all, Mabel apparently hadn’t noticed anything weird about his voice when Bill took over Dipper’s body and joined her sock opera. Still, Dipper was going to keep his eyes peeled.

“Be prepared for more magic, comedy, acrobatics, and general amazement! Oh, and did I mention the lions?”

The ringmaster set his megaphone off to the side of his podium, cracked his bullwhip again, and signaled to some men with a caged-in cart. A tall barrier had been placed in front of the tent’s exit, just like the ones that circled the arena. The first set of bleachers was level with the top of the temporary wall. At first, Dipper had assumed it was to give spectators a better view down into the ring, but now he realized it had another purpose.

The men cranked the cart’s door open, and a golden-brown blur of fur and muscle flew out. The crowd gasped as the lion leapt for one barrier. Dipper, seated in the fourth row down, was suddenly very conscious of how thin the divider was, but it held. The lion fell back, shook out his mane, and roared. A few young kids in the front row started crying, but the rest of the audience was busy snapping pictures and whispering. A hushed sense of awe had fallen over the stadium.

Lashing his tail, the lion went for the same barrier again, and this time Dipper leaned forward to get a better look. His breath caught in his throat – the lion only had one eye, bright and yellow, the same as the ringmaster’s coat, the same as Bill Cipher’s entire color scheme. He seemed to be looking right at Dipper as he bared his teeth. For a moment, it seemed almost like his claws had found purchase in the top of the divider, and the crowd began panicking and shouting. Stan was already putting on his brass knuckles, getting ready to teach that lion a lesson if he came near the kids.

Under different circumstances, Dipper might have taken a minute to appreciate how badass his Grunkle was. Under these circumstances, he instinctively moved to shield Mabel and squeezed his eyes shut.

The ringmaster’s whip cracked as loud as thunder. All the chaos ceased. Immediately, the lion dropped away from the wall, and Dipper felt a little silly for hugging Mabel so tightly. She shrugged him off and gave him a look before she returned to her conversation with Candy and Grenda.

“Fine, I won’t try to save your life next time,” he grumbled, even though he knew it was a lie.

Out in the center of the ring, the lion had rolled over onto his back and was batting at a toy the ringmaster dangled above him. Everyone squealed and ‘awh’ed over the sight.

“I want a pet lion!” Mabel shouted.

“You already have a pet pig!” Stan shouted back in protest.

Dipper barely even heard them. He watched, wide-eyed, as the ringmaster continued to play games with the lion. That was dangerous enough on its own, but the poor man had no idea his lion was under a demon’s control. _Or is it the poor man who’s under his control?_ Dipper fully expected the event to turn into a bloodbath, but so far the lion showed no other signs of aggression. He had only tried to attack Dipper, or possibly his family as well. That was even more worrying.

One-eyed lion, yellow ringmaster’s coat… It had to be connected to Bill somehow. Ringleader sounded like the perfect job for someone who always liked to put on an act and have control over everything. Then again, he’d always thought of Bill as more of a puppeteer, running the show behind the scenes, dancing his little marionettes on strings. But as the ringmaster paraded around fearlessly, walking the lion on a leash behind him, Dipper felt absolutely certain the whole thing had Bill written all over it. He had to tell someone. The last time he tried that, though, he ended up lying to Great-Uncle Ford. Mabel, however, could see right through him, and he knew it.

That was, if she could be bothered to even look at him. Mabel’s full attention was on the lion as it leaped through a flaming hoop. She whooped and shouted about how she was going to go to Africa and bring home a lion cub. The crowd gave the lion a standing ovation, and Dipper grudgingly clapped along when Mabel glared at him for staying seated.

Once the lion had been corralled back into his pen (not without a final glance in Dipper’s direction), the ringleader resumed his position on the podium and picked up his megaphone. He wiped at his brow with a handkerchief and asked,

“What did you think of that?”

In response, the audience cheered.

“Good, good. Now before my talented partners come back to the stage, I’d like to personally perform one more act. I’ll need an assistant for this one.”

Everybody in the bleachers began clamoring again, throwing their hands into the air, waving, some even standing to be seen. Dipper shrank back in his seat and jerked Mabel’s arm down.

“What’s the dealio?” she asked, looking mildly annoyed.

Candy and Grenda leaned out to look at Dipper with confused expressions, and he faltered. These people had been through Weirdmageddon with him; surely they’d listen if he told them he thought Bill was stirring up trouble again. A knot of anxiety stuck in his throat when he tried to explain it.

“We…we don’t know who that is, you can’t trust –”

“Check yourself before you wreck yourself, Mr. Paranoid,” Mabel said. She blew him a raspberry and stuck her hand up again.

If Dipper could find a way to tell her it was _Bill_ , he knew she’d take it seriously, but the problem was actually finding a way.

“Eenie, meenie, miney…you!”

“Ohhh no,” Dipper breathed, sliding as low in his seat as he could go. His heart felt like it had stopped in his chest.

That phrase wasn’t a coincidence, and neither was the fact that the ringmaster was pointing straight at him. For just a second, Mabel met his eyes, obviously wondering if he was thinking the same thing she was thinking. Neither of them would ever forget being squeezed in Bill’s oversized hand, watching two symbols flash in his eye and wondering which one of them was about to lose the other forever. Dipper almost dared to hope she would understand, but then she turned and called out,

“Me?”

“No, beside you, in the hat. Your twin, maybe?”

Everyone craned their necks to see who the lucky person was. Disappointed, Mabel plopped down and shoved Dipper with her shoulder.

“Go on, he’s talking about you.”

Dipper shook his head and laughed nervously. “Ahah, how about no?”

Mabel shot up again. “Sorry, my bro’s being a scaredy-cat, but would you be willing to accept the other twin as a substitute? I volunteer as tribute! Hold my cotton candy, you big baby, I’ll show you there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The ringmaster just laughed and invited her down to the stage, and the crowd laughed with him. The tips of Dipper’s ears burned red. Mabel swiped his hat off his head and tucked her hair under it in order to impersonate him. Dipper reached out to catch her by the sweater, but she was already gone, marching down the steps to the arena like the world’s biggest hero.

“Wait, Mabel –”

He tried to stand, but Candy and Grenda pulled him back into his seat.

“Dipper, let her have her moment!”

Desperately, he looked to Grunkle Stan, who was chortling and cheering like the rest of the crowd. No help there. Gritting his teeth, he sat up as tall as he could to watch as the ringmaster bowed to Mabel and kissed her hand. If something happened to her, it would be Dipper’s fault. He should have known she would just go in his place – even if that was Bill down there, Dipper would rather deal with him than make Mabel do it. Maybe he would actually stand a chance of reasoning with him.

The ringmaster directed Mabel to stand against a target his assistants had wheeled out. One of them handed him a belt.

Dipper’s stomach dropped to his shoes when he saw what came out of the belt. He had to stop this before Mabel got killed.

“Please don’t mess up,” she called out as the ringmaster backed away, four knives arrayed between his fingers and a fifth between his teeth.

The crowd tittered eagerly. Before Dipper could even cry out, the first knife sailed through the air. It speared the target an inch from Mabel’s left arm. Dipper blinked, and there were already two more knives arranged around her, one above her head and the other next to her right arm. Another thudded into the wood way too close to Mabel’s neck. Through it all, she just kept on smiling. How could she not see what was right in front of her? Dipper imagined the ringleader’s eyes with that yellowish taint on the whites, his face with a crescent grin that stretched unnaturally far.

The ringleader – Bill, it couldn’t have been anyone but Bill – took the final blade from his mouth. It danced from one finger to the next, light shimmering off the steel that Dipper was absolutely certain would pierce Mabel’s heart on the next throw. He went into a frenzy of panic and leapt from his seat to scream her name as the ringmaster spun on his heel and let the knife fly without aim. The crowd held its collective breath.

The knife was pinned to the board a hair’s breadth from Mabel’s ear. Maybe a few hairs’ breadths: a brown lock, untucked from beneath her brother’s hat, had drifted to the ground, sheared neatly. For five solid minutes, the tent was filled with deafening cheers and applause. Mabel shook the ringmaster’s hand and made her way back up into the stands, shaking everyone else’s hands on the way. When she finally reached her seat, she had to pry her cone of cotton candy from Dipper’s grip.

“Told you so!” she crowed. She jammed his hat on his head, backwards, and then waved one hand in front of his face hesitantly. His eyes were wide and blank as he stared at her. “Earth to Dippin’ Dot? You’re white as a ghost. Actually, weren’t the old people ghosts at the convenience store kinda blue? You’re just really pale. You’re not sick, are you?”

Dipper felt like he might faint. Mabel was completely unharmed, which was a cause for relief and also for dismay. Had he been wrong about everything? Was it all really just coincidence? Was he as crazy and paranoid as Mabel seemed to think he was?

She had already shrugged his odd behavior off and started chatting with her girls animatedly, describing what the knife-throwing had been like up close, and how the ringmaster was actually much older and nicer than she expected.

Dipper couldn’t take it any longer. By the time Mabel noticed he’d gotten up, he was already making a quick escape.

“Dipper, come back!”

He didn’t even seem to hear her, sidestepping around the legs of others in the row and muttering ‘excuse me’s until he reached the center aisle. Grunkle Stan started to follow him, but Dipper disappeared among the crowd as they stood and cheered for a magic act. When Mabel caught another glimpse, he was slipping out through the tent flaps.

Outside, Dipper sucked in a huge breath of fresh Oregon air and leaned against a tall post until his knees stopped shaking. The booths and stalls were unmanned, and the parking lot full of cars was eerily deserted. Everybody was inside the tent for the big events.

Dipper started walking without any real direction. He just wanted to get away from all the noise, and from Mabel. The next thing he knew, he was jogging, and then sprinting. He let his legs take him as fast as they could, wherever they wanted to, until he got a stitch in his side and had to slow down. Short of breath, he came to a halt at the edge of the woods and looked back across the expanse of field between there and the circus. From here, the tent didn’t seem so big.

“What’s the rush, kid?”

Dipper spun around to find a well-dressed man, who he was learning to identify as Bill, leaning against a tree. He wanted to yell at Bill, to demand answers, to ask if gaslighting was his grand scheme because if it was, it sure was working. His voice was unexpectedly calm, if breathless, when he asked, “What were you planning at the circus?”

Bill cocked his head and twirled his cane lackadaisically. “Circus?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about!”

Dipper had started shaking all over again. He wrapped his arms around himself as if he could pass it off as a chill, but the summer air was too warm for that. Bill brought the cane to a swift stop, hung it on a low, broken branch, and approached at a measured pace. Dipper backed up until he ended up cornered against a tree, but to be fair it was only by his own design. Bill specifically stopped at a distance that would leave Dipper several ways out, and Dipper just looked at him, uncomprehending.

“You gotta learn to trust me more. Contrary to what you may believe, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Circus,” Dipper repeated firmly. “If you want me to trust you, then you have to answer my questions.”

Bill sighed. “Well, of course I saw the giant fiasco that came into town. The magic wasn’t even good enough to be called second rate, but I suppose the real magic is in the art of deception, since all you humans seemed to eat it up. Or most of you humans. I noticed you didn’t, but, then again, I’d expect nothing less.”

“You noticed?” Dipper couldn’t help the tiny flutter of pride in his chest. He pushed it down the minute it came to his attention. He had more important things to worry about, like stopping the onset of a panic attack. “That means you _were_ there.”

“I never said I wasn’t. That lion was awfully cute, wasn’t he? Looked like he could bite someone’s head off.”

“That was you! I knew it was, I knew it. Trust you, you say, and then you possess a lion and try to make it eat me! What part of that is trustworthy?”

“When did I say I was the lion? I’ll have you know I had no part in that. I did find some amusement in it, though, but you can’t blame me.”

“Then…” Dipper hesitated. “Then you possessed the ringleader? You tricked him into a deal?”

“Hmm… Not recently, no. I did help him get his traveling circus on the road, in exchange for a valuable family heirloom, but that was years ago. Besides, why would I want to possess an old guy like him when I have a young sprout like you right here?”

Bill laughed loudly at that, and he seemed to be waiting for Dipper to join in. Dipper didn’t. Bill’s smile fell.

“I was kidding, PT, come on, take a joke. Anyways, a ringleader? That’s not exactly my style. So no, I didn’t take his body for a spin. I was just a spectator, like everybody else there. Happy now?”

“No, I’m not.” Dipper pushed his hands up under his hat and twisted his fingers in his hair. “I’m really just paranoid, then? I’m just _trying_ to see you everywhere I go?”

With a heavy sigh, he closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his palms against them. A swish of a coat startled him, and he nearly had a heart attack when he looked up and found Bill looming over him. By way of explanation, Bill held up the hat that had fallen off Dipper’s head, and delicately replaced it on top of Dipper’s mess of brown hair.

It was Wendy’s hat, and Dipper still hadn’t quite gotten used to it over the course of the year. He pulled it snugly on his head and over his ears, slid down to sit with his back against the tree, drew his knees up to his chest, and hid his face in his arms.

“Look, I’m flattered, but have you considered that it’s probably more my fault than yours that you’re so afraid of me? You can hardly call it paranoia is someone’s actually after you. I, for one, am not. Not anymore. There’s bound to be something else around here looking to make a snack out of an unsuspecting boy alone in the woods, but you’re not alone. You’re on my side now.”

“I’m not on your side, and I’m not afraid of you,” Dipper muttered. “I just hate you. A lot.”

“Cold, PT. You wound me.”

“PT? Again, really? Like I wouldn’t know what that stands for?”

“It’s just a nickname. I thought that was cool with you kids these days.”

“I already have one, thanks.”

“Ah, yes, Mason was your real name, wasn’t it? Mason and Mabel, ha! No wonder you renamed yourself after a constellation.”

“It’s for my birthmark, actually,” Dipper gritted, pushing his hair back from his forehead so Bill would see for himself. “I don’t know how you didn’t notice after that day you spent pretending to be me.”

Bill seemed enraptured, at a loss for words. He even crouched down to get a better look. If Dipper had known that would have made him shut up, he would have been flashing his birthmark around a lot sooner. After a certain point, it just started to get unnerving, and Dipper patted his hair back down.

“That’s very interesting,” Bill said, mostly to himself.

“Does it mean something?”

“Yes, but if I tell you, you’ll owe me.”

“Never mind, then. I don’t need to know.”

“I’ll even cut you a special deal. Off the books, unofficial, no hand-shaking required. Information in exchange for information.”

Dipper spent a long moment mulling it over, looking for any loopholes Bill might have left, before agreed upon finding none. “Tell me.”

“Your birthmark means magic. My turn now.”

“Hold on, what does that –”

“Do you have nightmares?”

A moment’s hesitation, and then Dipper nodded.

“About me? About Weirdmageddon?”

Another nod. Dipper kept his eyes trained on the ground between them. Bill was still crouching there in front of him, almost like a frog. Dipper would laugh about that later. Right now, Bill’s hard, unreadable expression wasn’t the best laughing material.

“And you really thought that was me, earlier?”

Dipper sighed and nodded one more time, but this time he elaborated. “I overreacted. I guess I’m always looking to blame you when something scares me. I thought it was you, that you were going to hurt Mabel, or…” He trailed off, not completely sure what else to say.

Bill seemed to understand, but he didn’t say anything either, at least for a minute. Fluidly, he shifted to sit next to Dipper and stretched his legs out. It was astonishing, how he could go from an awkward frog crouch to a perfectly normal position with so much grace.

“You know, you seem to care an awful lot about her, but I couldn’t help but notice that she doesn’t seem to be feeling the love.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve had enough Therapy Time with Cipher for today.”

“Hey, that sounds like it could be a show! I could be like Dr. What’s-his-face.”

“Dr. Phil?”

“Phil, that’s right! Man, you people have such boring names. You see, this is why I took to monikers like Question Mark, Shooting Star, Fez, et cetera.”

“I hate to break it to you but your name is literally _Bill_.”

“Not my real name,” Bill scoffed. “And no, before you ask, I can’t tell you what it is. It might destroy your poor mortal ears, and then I’d never get to annoy you with my voice again, and that would be a huge misfortune.”

“Oh, how would I live,” Dipper said sarcastically. He turned his head away from Bill and rested his cheek on top of his knee. “I meant it, Bill, I’ve kinda had enough already. What we’ve learned today is that I’m a neurotic mess of paranoia and anxiety, and I automatically assumed you were trying to kill my sister at the circus when you weren’t, and also apparently my birthmark is magic and nobody told me in all the thirteen years I’ve been alive.”

A hand came to rest on his shoulder. Dipper flinched, but he didn’t move away. Bill gave him time to change his mind, and when he didn’t, Bill moved his hand to tilt Dipper’s chin up enough to meet Bill’s eye.

“If I wanted to do something like that, I already would have. How many times do I have to tell you I’m not gonna hurt you?”

Dipper’s gaze flicked away, then back to Bill’s face. It was much easier to see his features in the light of day, from the neatly styled waves of blond hair to his lightly bronzed skin to the deep amber-gold of his sole iris. Dipper thought that might have been eyeshadow he was wearing, or maybe mascara. He wasn’t even sure what the difference was. All he knew was that Bill really didn’t look all that inhuman, at least not when his hair fell the right way across the triangular void that replaced his other eye.

“You’re still a demon, aren’t you?”

“Sure I am.”

Unblinking, Bill stared right back at him. Dipper had to wonder what he saw. A weak little kid with too many mental issues to count on one hand, many of which Bill was surely proud to claim responsibility for? Probably. After a moment, Bill spoke up again.

“About your Shooting Star problem –”

“Mabel. Call her Mabel.”

Bill groaned, as if changing another nickname would cause him physical pain. “You’re lucky I like you. I’ll call her MP, okay? Short for Mabel Pines, nothing bad there. Your MP problem, then. You said the same thing last time, that you didn’t want to talk about her, but you’ll have to eventually. It’s not healthy for you to keep so much angst pent up in such a small bag of flesh, you know, and that’s a direct quote from Dr. Phil.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not.”

“You got me. Just don’t come crying to me if you implode after trying to ignore the MP problem all summer. What I’m trying to tell you is, if you do want to talk about it, who else do you have –”

Bill stopped abruptly and just shrugged. His unfinished sentence hung in the air between them. Dipper raised his eyebrows. _Who else do I have to talk to? Is he offering to start this Therapy Time with Cipher thing on a regular basis?_

Finally, Bill said, “Well, as long as the MP problem is a problem, then I assume you’ll have some free time in your schedule to learn magic.”

Wide-eyed, Dipper pointed to himself uncertainly. “Learn magic, as in, me, learning magic, from you?”

“I didn’t think I had to spell it out for you, but yes.”

“No, no, I understood you well enough, it’s just…weird. Not even bad weird, just, weird.”

Dipper breathed in deeply, and his shoulders sank in as he exhaled. He still wasn’t sure how safe he felt around Bill, but for the time being he was too tired to keep thinking so hard about everything. It was some comfort to know that Bill hadn’t done anything earlier, and supposedly didn’t plan to. This had been a long enough day without that whole conversation, but, to his surprise, he actually felt a little better for it.

“Hey, when was the last time you got a good night’s sleep, PT?”

“I dunno,” Dipper answered truthfully. He had to wonder if Bill had used some kind of dream magic on him, or if he really was just this tired.

Either way, his eyelids were growing heavy, and he yawned every time he tried to say something, until he forgot what he wanted he wanted to say in the first place. Reluctantly, Dipper unfolded his body from where he sat against the tree and stretched out on the ground. Wendy’s winter trapper hat wasn’t actually much cushioning under his head, but he was too sleepy to care, and he cared just as little even when Bill guided him to lay his head down on Bill’s considerably more comfortable leg instead. The most he did was blink slowly up at Bill, more with confusion than suspicion. Bill smiled, and for once it didn’t seem menacing, or even smug. It almost seemed human.

Dipper started to drift off while Bill was rambling about his prospective future network program, _Therapy Time with Dr. Cipher_ , and expounding on the virtues of showbusiness, all in a relatively hushed tone compared to his normal two volume settings of Making Eardrums Bleed and Ordering Worldwide Destruction. He went completely quiet to listen when Dipper mumbled,

“Maybe I am lucky you like me all of a sudden but I don’t…understand why…”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he figured falling asleep in a dream demon’s lap wasn’t the smartest decision he’d ever made, but he was out like a light before he could give it any consideration.

Bill shook his head with an expression that Dipper never would have imagined on his face. It would have surprised him to learn that a creature like Bill even knew the meaning of the word ‘sympathy’. Bill could be a convincing actor, but with Dipper's eyes closed, it no longer felt like he was pretending. There was no reason to pretend, so why was his mouth still curled in a frown, his eyebrows pinched with worry? The plan was not to indulge in meaningless flickers of human emotion when it wasn't required.

Still, there had to be some reason he spent the better part of his evening making sure Dipper’s dreams were completely undisturbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL CHAPTERS AFTER THIS DO NOT DIRECTLY FOLLOW THE CORRECT STORYLINE. They will be updated as I go along, but for now, they stay as they are. Just realize that they are there as placeholders and not as continuations of the rebooted version.


	3. Chapter 3

Ever since waking to find himself safe in his own bed after falling asleep in the forest with Bill, Dipper hasn’t been able to define his levels of trust. It’s not like he’s any less suspicious than he was before; he’s still not entirely convinced of Bill’s good intentions, no matter what kindness he’s been shown lately. But he’s beginning to wish the demon would turn up again soon.

Besides, staring out the window for any sign of Bill is a better alternative to fighting with Mabel. She’s been gone a lot lately, hanging out with Pacifica, of all people. The times she is home, the two of them don’t speak much. His heart aches with the distance between them, but he’s learning to ignore it.

To stay busy, he keeps the journal open, with his own extra pages scattered around the desk. He hasn’t shown this to Ford yet, and he doesn’t intend to until he has it all neat and organized. Most of the time, he sits there and copies his notes onto clean sheets of paper, only to mess them up with slashes and arrows to correct and redirect the scattered beginnings of a fourth journal. Notes and theories and notes and theories. Maybe it won’t be Journal 4, though, maybe he can make it something entirely different. Fiction? He jots down the idea in the corner of the margin and circles it.

As a break, Dipper takes the original journal and a mystery novel with him to the plush red window seat, deciding to give his hand a rest from the pencil by reading instead. Today, he decides to switch up his location. He opens the window and crawls out the side, hoisting himself and his books up onto the ledge overlooking the front yard.

There’s only half an hour of light left, at the most, but it’s nice and cool, and the sky is awash with the reds and oranges and purples of a stunning sunset. He takes a seat in Wendy’s chair and flips open the novel he’s already finished many times over. He barely sees the words this time.

This summer, he’s almost been too preoccupied to think much about Wendy. She’s no less epic than she’s always been, and Dipper’s technically a real teen now, so he should be hanging out with her and the gang, right? Social interaction just doesn’t sound ideal at the present time though. Let Mabel go have fun being around people. He’s content to stay at home and do his own thing.

He slouches down in his seat and murmurs, “Just me, myself –”

“And I!” an all-too-obvious someone chimes, and Dipper falls off his chair with a yell.

As he flounders to get up, he puts his foot backwards for a hold, only to step into open air. In a last ditch effort, he grabs the chair for balance, but it’s too lightweight. He slides over the edge, half-supporting the tipping chair with his face, legs dangling. Wisely, he elects to hold onto the roof instead of the beach chair, struggling to pull himself up.

“A little help here?” Dipper asks, his voice cracking.

“Oh, I thought you looked comfortable down there. My bad.”

With the tiniest hint of a grin on his face, Bill moves the chair out of the way and rights it, then leans down to grip Dipper’s arms, which are trembling with the effort of holding his full weight. He pulls Dipper up with so much force that the boy actually goes higher in the air than Bill’s arms are prepared for, but he doesn’t have a chance to make a noise this time, only an ‘oof!’ as Bill catches him and swings him down to the beach chair. Dipper’s pretty sure he hasn’t been tossed in the air like that since he was a toddler.

“What” is the first word out of his mouth, and he amends it with a “Why?”

“Why what, Pine Tree? Why am I so perfect? We just don’t know.”

“Shut up, you…” Dipper shoves the demon almost playfully, and then realizes he just shoved a _demon_ almost _playfully_ , and wonders if he’ll ever understand what the heck is going on with him anymore. “I meant, why are you here in the first place? And why did you help me again?” He looks at his hands in mild horror. “You didn’t somehow seal a deal just now, did you?”

Bill shrugs, smoothing his tailcoat before he takes a seat on the end of the chair. “I told you I’ll get a deal out of you. But not now. Ever consider that maybe I just do things because I can? I happened to be in the area and noticed the princess in distress.”

Dipper snorts and pulls his legs up to give Bill some room, and nearly scoots onto the paperback novel. Bill even saved that, apparently. “You’re not playing favorites, then?”

“I never said that.”

It’s then that he realizes Bill is holding the journal Dipper brought out with him, and he does his best to suppress his panic. Bill does nothing more than flip through it, pausing on the page of warnings Ford wrote about him, before he hands it back.

“Aw, you aren’t still convinced I want to burn those journals, are you? I’m sure all the information’s completely locked up in your head by now anyways. Here, have some more.” Bill flicks his fingers, and a shower of blue sparks produce a stack of books from nothing. He picks up the one on top and blows dust off the cover to see the title. “ _Demonology for Dummies_. _Translating from Archaic, Arcane, and Abnormal Languages_. Oh, look, there’s also _Guide to the Supernaturale Edition I_ , very rare. And my personal favorite, _Cooking with Hellfire_.”

Bemused, Dipper takes the third book, weighing the huge tome experimentally. He can’t help the excitement rising in his chest as he thinks about all he might learn from this. But why would Bill give him all this knowledge for free? Sure, that last one might have been a joke, but the other three books look to be serious reading.

Bill must be able to guess the question just from the look Dipper is giving him. “I told you, sometimes I do things because I can. Figured you must be tired of that tiny worn-out mystery you’re always reading.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know _The Case of the Caper-Case Caper_ is a classic. Ten out of ten, would highly recommend.” Dipper hesitates, then presses the paperback into Bill’s hand. “Read it.”

Bill makes a long wordless noise of complaint, carelessly letting the front cover fall open to reveal the pages beneath. “All-seeing chaos demon and here I am, reading a children’s book.” He crosses his legs, readjusts his hold on said children’s book, and quiets down to read.

Dipper stares at him with unrestrained skepticism. He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He searches for the sinking sun behind the trees for a moment. There’s a nice warm ray of light positioned just right for him to read if he sits next to Bill, so he does. Bill glances at him momentarily, smiles vaguely, and goes back to his own reading. Dipper opens the book about lost languages and skims the handy table of contents before flipping to a section on infernal alphabets.

Reading in the fading orange light on the rooftop next to Bill makes the time go by too fast, and before he knows it, Dipper is squinting in the dark to make out the words. He pauses in the endeavor and watches Bill, who has set aside the mystery novel and is pulling off his gloves. Bill murmurs something under his breath and puts the heels of his hands together to create a cup, where blue crystals begin to materialize into an hourglass shape. In its perfect finished form, it’s made from something clear like glass or plastic, but not heavy and not artificial, with two rounded ends.

Like a proud child showing off a stick-figure drawing they labored over, Bill presents the hourglass, sans sand. Uncertainly, Dipper takes it, and nearly loses control of it in surprise when it glows bright blue. He holds it more securely to inspect it, shaking it and watching the particles inside dance, the mystical light coloring his dazzled face.

“It responds to the warmth of your hands,” Bill explains before Dipper can start firing off questions.

To test it, Dipper sets the hourglass-light down on the chair, and in the cold it dims to its regular opaqueness. Bill picks it up, but it doesn’t flare to life the way it did in Dipper’s hands. Dipper scrunches his eyebrows with confusion.

“Give me your hand,” he says, and he doesn’t mean it to sound the way it does, but it does, and, well. He’s just going to ignore any subtext here and focus on the science. “You’re freezing!”

“Am I?”

Dipper almost doesn’t want to let go, because Bill’s so _cold_ and it doesn’t feel right to not try to warm his hand up, but he reminds himself that he still has a rule against trusting this guy. But then why is he sitting so close to him?

Bill goes back to the book, and after a moment more of overthinking, Dipper does the same, picking up the hourglass to shed some light on their pages. He never thought he’d feel so comfortable around someone he used to call a monster.

“Dipper?” his sister calls from inside the attic, shattering the moment. She leans out the window, puffing. “What are you doing out here? I’ve been looking all over for you. Dinner’s ready.”

Dipper fumbles to stash the hourglass in his vest as he talks, keeping his hands off it so it won’t light up. “I was – just, uh, just reading!”

Mabel frowns, eyeing him suspiciously. “In the dark?”

“Yes, reading in the dark.”

“That’ll ruin your eyes, you know.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Dipper says sarcastically. “Here, take these.” He leans down from the ledge to hand her a few books – not the new ones Bill gave him, of course. He crams those ones into his deep vest pockets, even though they’re bulky and weigh a metric ton.

There’s no telling where Bill disappeared to. Maybe it’s for the better that Mabel doesn’t know he’s been lurking around. Dipper climbs in through the window, bounces off the seat, and scurries to his room to stow the books and the magic reading light beneath his bed. He glances over his shoulder as Mabel leaves. There was a time when he would have willingly told her the whole story, but not anymore.

Enough of that. He’d rather think about how excited he is to start reading tonight. He can’t help but smile and blow dust off the cover of one of the big books before he gets up.

Downstairs, the Pines family assumes their regular positions. Stan and Mabel chat animatedly on their end of the table, while Ford, sitting opposite Stan, juggles between writing and eating, a solid wall of silence but for an occasional mumble under his breath. Dipper wishes he could have brought a notebook to do the same, but then the others would actually bother him about what he’s writing or call him out for being antisocial. With Great-Uncle Ford, the policy is ‘if you can’t stop him, let him do it.’

Grunkle Stan leans over to jostle Dipper with his elbow. “Whatcha been up to, kiddo?”

“Just relaxing and enjoying the summer I guess? I’ve gotten a lot of writing done, and –”

“A bunch of nerd stuff, probably,” Mabel interrupts through her mac and cheese. She and Stan share a laugh at that, but Dipper’s in too good a mood to let it get to him this time. Really, he just wants to get back upstairs and sink into one of those books.

“And, pray tell, what have _you_ been doing, sister mine?” he asks in retaliation, tapping the side of his fork against her plate to get her attention.

“Oh, me? I’ve been having loads of fun with Candy and Grenda and Pacifica! We’re all having a sleepover at Pacifica’s mansion tonight.”

Dipper wouldn’t have seen that coming a year ago. Then again, he supposes Pacifica isn’t so bad a friend for Mabel to have, all things considered. He studies his twin for a moment, trying to see how she’s grown. Other than gaining another inch on him in height, she’s the same as she’s always been, in his eyes. Why, then, is there suddenly this gap between them?

Mabel waves her hand in front of his face. “It’s rude to stare, Dip Dop.”

He snorts and stirs his food idly, managing a few bites of mac and cheese, but he’s too excited to be hungry, thinking about the books stashed away under his bed. “May I be excused?” he asks, at the exact same time that Mabel does. They blink at each other for a moment, wondering if it was pure luck or if it was the old connection that once kept them joined them at the hip.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stan grants, shoveling mashed potatoes into his mouth. “But I want both of you back down here for some quality family bonding time in half an hour, capiche?”

“But my sleepover –”

“No buts, sweetie. You can pack up now and spare some Grunkle time until your rich friend gets here.”

With a dramatic teenage sigh, Mabel relents and stomps upstairs, with Dipper a safe distance behind. Dipper waits until she starts venting her rage by choosing her outfits and packing her bag, and he decides she’s preoccupied enough not to notice him digging under his bed for whichever book his hand lands on first. Sweaters are flying across the room and Mabel’s turned up her pop music full blast, and Dipper doesn’t feel like trying to get her to stop, so he takes his book and a pen and hurries out of the room.

He’s halfway down the stairs when he stops to look at which book he picked, and rethinks bringing it in sight of his family. The crimson lettering of the title _Cooking with Hellfire_ stands out against the front cover, illustrated with all sorts of creative dishes for demons, from cupcakes with inverted pentagrams on them to some kind of blood stew. Dipper can’t tell if it will even provide any serious information, but he might get a laugh out of it. And Bill gave it to him, so that’s a good enough reason to give it a shot. If questioned, he can probably convince Grunkle Stan it’s a joke book.

Even so, Dipper half-conceals it in his vest as he goes to join Stan in the living room, taking a seat on the massive skull of who-knows-what creature next to the armchair.

“Whoa-ho, early, aren’t you? 15 suck-up points!” Chuckling, Stan nudges Dipper. “Remember that, kid?”

“Yeah, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper admits, rubbing the back of his neck. “I remember the suck-up points.”

Once Stan is absorbed in the daily episode of Baby Fights, Dipper brings his legs up and opens the book on his lap, resting his chin on his hand as he skims the introduction. The first recipe is some kind of bright pink and green and brown caffeinated smoothie that looks like something his sister could have come up with. On cue, Mabel shows up with her pink bag. Unnoticed, Ford looms behind her in the doorway.

“Dipper, how many times have I told you not to sit on that?”

Dipper jumps, peering over his shoulder with a completely guilty look on his face. Hastily, he moves from the skull to the floor. “Sorry, Great-Uncle Ford.”

Ford leans over him and plucks up the book without asking for permission, squinting at the cover. “What are you reading? I’m confiscating this.”

“Er, you’re welcome to join us,” Stan offers, but his brother doesn’t even respond. He and Dipper watch Ford wander off to somewhere else in the Shack, look at one another, and cover their mouths with their hands to muffle their laughter.

Even Mabel is starting to grin. “What was that about?”

“It was a _cookbook_ ,” Dipper confesses, sending them all into a riot.

By the time they finally stop laughing, wiping tears from the corners of their eyes, Mabel looks like she can’t even remember what she was so upset about, and Dipper’s glad to see it. She sits next to him on the floor at Stan’s feet, doodling aggressively in her sketchbook. As she outlines what’s probably a character from some anime, her tongue pokes out with focus. It’s a habit they both share, although Dipper’s more prone to chewing on his pens or pencils.

They aren’t talking, but when Stan’s soap opera gets to a dramatic moment, he leans down, shushes them, and holds them both together, sniffling. They exchange a grin and watch the scene unfold on the television, content and quiet and as peaceful as they’ve been in a long time.

The doorbell rings obnoxiously. Mabel jumps up, grabs her bag, gives Grunkle Stan a hug and Dipper an awkward pat on the head, and runs to answer the door. Squealing and giggles provide proof that it is her friends outside, and then the sounds recede as they all leave together.

Dipper glances down at the sketchbook she left open on the floor. In the blue-white glow of the TV, he can just make out the features of the face she was drawing – with a start, he realizes it’s him. When did she become such a skilled traditional artist?

Chest heavy with melancholy, Dipper closes the sketchbook and takes it with him, only pausing to squeeze Stan’s shoulder before he jogs up the stairs. Carefully, he sets the drawing pad on Mabel’s bed for her. He gazes at the wall of stuffed animals lining the edge of her pink blanket, then out the window into the inky mass of nighttime forestry, distorted by the light of his lamp.

Is Bill out there somewhere?

Dipper crouches down to dig another one of the books out from under his bed. He’s glad the one Ford took wasn’t anything important, and wonders what he’ll even do with it, make eyeball cookies from scratch? Maybe Bill would get a laugh out of that.

He settles on his bed and pushes his feet under the blanket, with _Guide to the Supernaturale_ nestled in his lap. It’s very word-heavy, with many weird spellings and phrasing that reminds him of English poetry, and he has to wonder just how many centuries old this book is, how much history is behind it, who wrote it in the first place. All good questions. He’ll have to ask Bill, though the answer will probably be cryptic at best.

He can feel himself nodding off, but Dipper fights to stay awake and read. He understands one word out of the line he’s on, and goes back to restart from the beginning of the paragraph. As his fingers uncurl from the edges of the book, his last thought is a vague wish that the demon were here. More than that, he wishes Mabel were here.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s the last week of summer, and Mabel is already in party-planning mode. This year, they’re going to celebrate their birthday courtesy of Pacifica, which feels wrong on so many levels. Leaning against the wall on the porch, Dipper watches the two girls hug, clasp hands, and do a few excited jumps in the yard. Pacifica doesn’t even fuss about the mud splashing on her white boots, and Dipper respects her a tiny bit more for that, but her acting like a normal person isn’t going to change his annoyance that Mabel’s allowing her to hijack their birthday party.

“Aren’t you coming with us, Dip Dip?” Mabel calls when they finally stop hopping.

“Please, does he _look_ like he’s dressed for a day of awesome mall shopping?” Pacifica scoffs, gesturing to his outfit. Which is to say, his pajamas. Mabel covers her mouth with her hand to whisper something about him to Pacifica, and they start giggling again.

Dipper considers mocking her about her own clothes, because who wears _jeggings_ , but it’s not worth the effort. Fashion isn’t something he’s an expert on anyways. “No,” he says simply, and turns to go back inside the Shack.

At the kitchen table, he aggressively spoons his cereal into his mouth, even though he isn't hungry. The faster he’s done eating, the faster he can get upstairs and read and pretend he’s not angry with his sister.

“What’s got you so peppery?” asks Stan. He slides Dipper a Pitt Cola and takes the half-finished bowl of cereal to the sink.

“…You mean salty?”

“Eh, same difference, whatever you kids say these days.”

Dipper makes a ‘pfft’ noise that’s as close to a laugh as he can manage right now. “It’s nothing, Grunkle Stan.”

Stan takes a seat next to him and cracks the tab on his own soda. “Sure it is, bucko, I can tell when something’s wrong with you. You’re not spouting nerd talk or trying to get my brother’s attention as much as usual.”

Frowning, Dipper taps alternating thumbs on the can. He wishes he had his hat to hide his troubled expression so he could avoid this whole conversation. “I don’t know, Mabel’s just been…”

“Leaving you behind?” Stan guesses with surprising accuracy. Dipper’s sharp look up at him is the only confirmation necessary. “She’s always made friends and stayed in touch easily, but you, not so much, right? And you never realized how much you need her.”

Dipper pushes away from the table, jerking his arm back when Grunkle Stan tries to catch him. He storms upstairs, crossing the attic in a few strides.

“You know you can talk to me, Dipper, come on –”

The sound of a slamming door cuts him off. On the other side of it, Dipper sinks down to sit on the floor and pulls his knees up to rest his forehead on them. He wants to cry, but the tears won’t come, and that just makes him more frustrated. He hates that Stan is right. He hates that Mabel’s not the dependent one anymore, that logically he can live without her and he’ll have to when they’re adults anyways, but at the same time he can’t.

All Dipper’s wanted for the past year is to grow up and to be treated with respect, but suddenly getting older doesn’t feel so great. Not if it means his twin will barely talk to him.

A loud thunk makes him lift his head. Outside the triangular windowpane, Bill’s grin is flipped, the long tails of his coat swishing up next to his head. Raising his eyebrows, Dipper gets up, grabbing his hat from his bed as he goes. At first, he thinks Bill is just hanging like a bat from the edge of the roof, until he sees that Bill’s legs are free. He’s floating.

“Why the long face, Pine Tree?” Bill’s voice is muffled through the glass. He puts his fingers to the edges of his lips to pull them down in a frown, but since he’s upside down, it looks like a weird emoji smile.

Tentatively, Dipper laughs. He points to the side, and Bill seems to get the message. Tugging his hat in place, Dipper hurries out to the attic floor and climbs up on the window seat. He pushes the panes apart quickly, and one smacks Bill right in the face.

“Oh gosh I’m sorry!”

Dramatizing the injury, Bill reels and plummets ten feet before he catches himself and shoots back up to the window, beaming.

“Dude, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” Dipper complains, leaning over the windowsill to give Bill’s shoulder a shove.

“Excuse me, at least I didn’t hit you across the head with a window.”

Dipper feels bad when he spots the line imprinted on Bill’s cheek from the elaborate design on the glass, but Bill elbows him lightheartedly.

“Take a joke, kid. Hey, have you ever wanted to fly?”

“To what –” Dipper starts, only to have all his words sucked back into his throat as Bill grabs him and pulls him out the window, off into the misty open air.

It takes five minutes before he finds the courage to open his eyes and release the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. The Mystery Shack is far behind them. Awkwardly, he loosens his grip on Bill’s shoulders, glancing up at him. Bill looks down and chuckles.

“No need to be so tense, I’ve got you.”

For some reason, Dipper chooses to believe him. He feels oddly safe and secure in Bill’s arms, even though being carried bridal style is a little humiliating. The air is chilly, raising all the hairs on his arms, and he wishes he’d thought to bring his vest, but how was he supposed to know he’d be going on a surprise adventure?

“You’re not, like, abducting me, are you?” he asks when the possibility occurs to him.

“When are you finally gonna learn to trust me, kid?”

“Trust no one,” Dipper quotes cheekily, but it comes out more serious than he means it to.

Bill sighs. “Your uncle ruined you without even being around for the majority of your life.”

“You knew Great-Uncle Ford?”

“Well who do you think ruined him?” Bill isn’t meeting Dipper’s eyes anymore. “I’ll tell you more some other time. Maybe if we make a deal.”

“Forget about it,” Dipper huffs, although the beginnings of a bad idea are unfurling in his mind. Remembering the incident from last week, he steers the conversation in a funnier direction. “He got ahold of your cookbook, so I doubt I’ll ever see that again. At least it wasn’t anything important.”

Bill laughs, and it doesn’t necessarily sound forced but it’s just a little off. “Ask him to make us blood stew sometime!”

Dipper screws up his face. “Gross, man, there’s something wrong with you.” Jokingly, he pushes away from Bill, only to almost lose his balance. He flails back in the other direction and hugs Bill’s chest tightly, ignoring the warmth of his cheeks as he breathes in the distinct citrus and cinnamon scent embedded in the fabric of Bill’s suit.

It’s actually pleasant to be flying, or at least carried by someone who’s flying, as long as he doesn’t look down. No turbulence, just steady and evenly paced movement through the air. Moisture collects on the slightly curled ends of his hair, and on Bill’s. Their velocity stirs up a cool breeze, and Dipper lays his head back, closing his eyes. He might have dozed off, but he’s not quite sure, and the next time he blinks it’s sunny and they’ve covered about another mile of forest.

A startling guttural noise somewhere between a roar and a screech shakes the air, ringing deafeningly in his ear, and it takes Dipper a moment to recover and realize it came from Bill. At the boy’s quizzical look, Bill simply winks.

“Wait for it.”

Behind them, something echoes Bill’s call, deep and ferocious. Then, more creatures join in, their cries more on the squeaky side than the intimidating roar of what must have been their parent. Eyes wide, Dipper struggles to get more upright and look back over Bill’s shoulder.

“No way,” he whispers.

Soaring behind them is an enormous beast with the head of a golden eagle and the forelegs of its talons, and the rest of its body is that of a lion – a gryphon. Even more incredible are the five smaller ones, only cubs, or chicks, whatever they’d be called. They look awkward, with their lion halves outweighing their eagle front, making their flight lopsided, and Dipper’s first thought is that these mistakes of nature are adorable.

The mother gryphon spreads her impressive wingspan and flaps once, rising and gliding above Bill, who faces backwards to let Dipper look at the creatures more easily. One baby gryphon boldly comes within range, and reverently Dipper reaches out to pat its head. The mix of feathers and fur is weird but also so soft he just wants to rub his face in it, but the gryphon nips him with its beak and zips off back to its siblings.

All of them stay out of reach after that, but they tag along for a while and make some kind of formation with Bill in the center, and Dipper can’t stop staring around at the gryphon family with awe. He never saw anything like this recorded in the journals (or at least the third one, since Great-Uncle Ford still refuses to relinquish the first two).

Eventually, with their peculiar roar-shrieks, the gryphons split off and circle back towards their own territory. Bill hovers in place and turns to watch. Dipper looks up at him after the gryphons are far in the distance, and he can’t stop the big smile from spreading across his lips.

“That was _awesome_ ,” he proclaims, and doesn’t stop talking as they descend to the forest floor. “Did you see them? How does that even work? Where do gryphons come from? Like, when a mommy lion and a daddy eagle love each other very much…? Or are they just a completely different species? What if they’re not part-lion or part-eagle like we think, what if there’s just a common ancestor from a million years ago?”

They land lightly on the grass, and Bill lets Dipper down from his arms. Dipper stumbles for a moment, trying to regain his balance and adjust to the heaviness of gravity after being in flight for so long. Helpfully, Bill catches his hand and anchors him, and Dipper looks up, still grinning, and jumps to wrap his arms around Bill’s neck in a willing hug this time. Bill doesn’t seem to know how to reciprocate it, hesitating before awkwardly patting Dipper’s back with both hands.

Once he lets go, Dipper asks, very seriously, “What do you call a group of gryphons?”

The look Bill gives him, half smile and half furrowed eyebrows, cracks him up, and Bill starts laughing too. Dipper has to hold onto him for support again, only to drag both of them down to fall on their butts in the grass, and that makes them laugh harder. Dipper lies on his back, giggling, until he can finally wheeze,

“I mean it, is it a pride? Or is it a flock?”

Bill just makes the same face again, somewhere between fondness and outright confusion, and Dipper tries to sit up, only to clutch his chest and fall back again because he can’t stop laughing. “This is important, Bill!”

When the sporadic bouts of giggles finally die down for good, Dipper pushes himself up with his hands and wipes tears from his eyes.

“This suit is probably ruined,” Bill grumbles, raising up to wipe blades of wet grass from his coattails and slacks. “Are you happy?”

Dipper smiles and sticks his tongue out. “I am, actually. And hey, at least you don’t have soggy socks.” He wiggles his toes and then brings his legs up to pull said socks off, tossing them to the side. “Also, you’re all cozy in your stylish coat, and I left my vest jacket at home.”

Bill hums and starts to unbutton the portion of the yellow tailcoat that goes around his midriff, shrugging out of the sleeves, which leaves him in a starch white vest with a black dress shirt underneath. And, of course, his iconic bow tie. He drapes the coat over Dipper’s shoulders before standing up and tugging Dipper with him. With one hand, Dipper holds the coat together, choosing to keep his arms inside it and leave the sleeves empty. It’s a little too long for him, and the tails brush the ground, but Bill doesn’t complain this time.

“Where are we going?” Dipper asks as they start walking. He thought he knew a good chunk of this forest like the back of his hand, but he doesn’t recognize this area. For one thing, it’s more grassy than pine needle-y.

Expressively, Bill raises his shoulders and hands. “Wherever we wanna go. That’s the fun of knowing a guy at the top of the food chain, Pine Tree.”

Dipper shakes his head and smiles, snuggling into the fabric of the coat. It’s actually quite warm, for such a thin-looking garment, and he has to wonder if magic is involved.

He also has to wonder when exactly he stopped thinking of the dream demon as an enemy and started thinking of him as a friend.

Bill doesn’t seem to have a particular destination in mind, or a sense of direction. They wander in content quiet for a while, listening to birds chirping in the background, and Dipper thinks that if he had to choose a moment to relive forever, this might be it.

It must be around noon, and he’s getting a little hungry, but he doesn’t want to say anything. His stomach does the job for him, rumbling loudly, and he rubs the back of his neck as Bill stops to look at him.

“Shall we eat?”

“I’m starving,” he admits. “I didn’t pack any food or anything, so –”

Bill snaps his fingers and pulls a red and white tablecloth from his shirtsleeve like a trick magician with silks, and unfurls it over a big tree stump to serve as a table. On it, he puts out a plate of small, neatly cut roast-beef-and-cheese sandwiches. Dipper blinks as Bill takes a seat on the grass. There are a lot of things he wants to ask and he doesn’t even know where to start.

“Is this a picnic?”

“I think so,” Bill says, barely looking up as he concentrates of pouring himself a glass of wine without actually holding the bottle or the glass. When it’s nearly brimming with the reddish-purple liquid, he raises it to Dipper in a toast, taking a sip before he realizes Dipper is watching him. “Oh, sorry, did you want some?”

“How did you know this is my favorite type of sandwich?” Dipper asks, not sure whether to be creeped out or touched. He’s already taken a bite of one before he considers they might be poisoned. They’re good, though, and at this point, if Bill is still trying to kill him, Dipper’s let down his guard so much that it won’t matter how he does it.

Taking a sandwich for himself, Bill shrugs. He picks it apart neatly, eating only the meat and setting the bread and cheese aside. It’s so silly, especially for Bill Cipher of all people, and Dipper can’t help but laugh. He’s enjoying himself more than he’d admit to. When they finish their picnic, Bill cleans up the area with a wave of his hand, and Dipper pulls the coat around himself again even though he’s not really cold anymore. The sun has cleared the mist away, even from the lowest layers beneath the tall pines.

Meandering through the forest with the demon, Dipper completely loses track of the passage of time. They chat about everything and nothing, and this is the most comfortable he’s ever been with someone other than his sister, he thinks, and he doesn’t know how that makes him feel nor does he want to ruin his mood by dwelling on it. Bill shows him all kinds of things he’s never seen in the journal, things he suspects Great-Uncle Ford has never even seen in the first place, and if he were a better protégé he might be more focused on committing everything Bill tells him to memory for the sake of recording it later. That’s the last thing on his mind, for this time, he’s an adventurer, not a scholar.

They duck beneath abnormally large leaves and hop over logs and weave between the trees in a tightly-knit grove, threading their way through the vast forest without any regard for how lost they might be. Bill points out blue-topped mushrooms that supposed induce sleep when ground up into a powder, and unique pink lilies that glow in the dark and, when mixed in water with a solute of unicorn tears, can cure blindness. There are many more flowers with special properties, and Bill names every one of them scientifically and then with his favorite nickname; the best one is ‘the gassy herb,’ known for its tendency to cause flatulence.

Besides the beautiful untouched plants, they also find a lot of wildlife, ranging from tiny mice with three tails to a massive three-eyed boar that Dipper jokingly christens Waddles’ dad. They stumble upon a colony of wild cats – technically called a clowder, Dipper informs, and Bill seems mildly impressed – with unnaturally colored fur in all shades of neon, as well as monstrous fangs that don’t fit in their mouths.

The most interesting encounter of the night goes to a young cervitaur who hides shyly behind a tree when he’s spotted. His flanks are reddish-tan, and starting where his deer body meets his human torso, his skin is a little darker than that. There are nubby, budding antlers at the top of his head, barely poking out over his uncombed hair, and on each side is one large floppy ear. He’s out in the open just long enough to let them get a good look at him before he canters away.

The sun has long set by the time they circle back to a part of the forest Dipper recognizes. Until they slowed down here, he barely realized how sore his feet are. He takes a seat at the top of the slope and pulls the callused soles towards him for a better look. His skin is speckled with dirt and grass all the way up to his ankles, but he doesn’t really mind.

Sitting next to him, Bill points down into the hollow. “Remember those?”

From the top, they can only see the bright blue fireflies, burning out in dark patches only to be replaced by many more. Beyond the lone willow tree, out of place in this kind of environment, the surface of the stream glimmers, holding all the reflected stars captive beneath the crystal water.

“Yeah, I do,” Dipper says with a smile.

He never imagined that encountering the dream demon at the beginning of the summer would lead to this, whatever this is. Something like companionship, maybe. The fleetingly brief meetings with Bill throughout these weeks have come to be something he looked forward to, to keep his mind off of Mabel. It feels unfair that the first real day they spent exploring together is so close to the end.

“Hey, Bill?”

It’s peaceful, the night filled with the singing of the crickets, the giggling of the stream. It can’t last.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Thank you.” He doesn't say for what, doesn't need to.

Dipper shrugs out of the coat and hands it back to Bill. He pulls up his knees and folds his arms between them and his chest, sighing almost imperceptibly, leaning his head on Bill’s shoulder. 

The next thing he knows he’s being shaken gently awake, and he’s not on the ground. Instinctively, he grabs onto the closest thing his hands can find, and he sees it’s Bill holding him securely again. Once his brain finally catches up, he realizes they’re at the tree line, just out of range of the warm yellow light spilling onto the grass from the kitchen window of the Mystery Shack.

“I figured you’d be wanting to get home,” Bill says by way of explanation. He lowers Dipper to his feet and makes sure he’s steady enough that he won’t trip.

“Promise me something.”

Bill tilts his head curiously, one hand already lighting with blue fire, but Dipper smacks it away almost angrily. Instead, he takes the other hand, holding it tightly.

“You have to come back again before I leave to go home, okay? Before next Monday.”

Taking advantage of Dipper’s hand gripping his, Bill pulls him in, wrapping his arms around him. “I think you already are home, Pine Tree,” he says softly, and releases him just like that.

Dipper opens and closes his mouth, not sure what he’s supposed to make of this – the hug, or what was said. Hoping the color in his cheeks isn’t noticeable, he turns and marches towards the Shack, hands pushed deep in his pockets. On the porch, he looks back, watching the magic yellow coat through the trees until he can’t track it anymore. Bill never promised.

The door swings open, startling him out of his trance. Great-Uncle Ford stares down at him with a stony look on his face that instantly makes Dipper feel guilty. Timidly, he slips past, into the kitchen. Grunkle Stan is sitting at the table, his Pitt Cola untouched, and he leaps to his feet when Dipper comes in. At the same time, Mabel bursts through the front door, already rambling about her trip to the mall. When she comes to the kitchen doorway and finally catches on to the atmosphere, she shuts up immediately

“Sweet Moses, where have you two been?”

Dipper hadn’t even considered how he was going to defend himself when he got home, and now with both adults standing over him he’s too nervous to think of an alibi on the spot. Clearly, Mabel is more confident in her innocence, because she puts her hands on her hips and starts to explain her case without a hitch.

“I was going to have Pacifica’s fancy chauffeur drop me off here, but her parents called and asked if I’d do them the honor of having dinner with –”

“Quiet, Mabel, we’ll deal with you in a minute,” Ford says harshly, his glasses glinting. Stan is about to object to being lumped in with the ‘we,’ shooting Mabel an apologetic look, but Ford is already going off on Dipper.

“What were you _thinking_ , boy? I – we – have been worried sick. You owe us an explanation!” Ford pressures. Even as he starts lecturing, he has one of his journals open, glancing down at it from time to time. Is he just distracted, or did he write this whole speech out? “I went upstairs to look for you –”

“You mean I did,” Stan interjects, arms crossed, but his brother steamrolls on.

“What were we supposed to think when we found the attic window wide open? Stanley said you hadn’t gone with your sister, so what did you expect us to assume, Dipper? We thought you’d run away! Your parents would kill me. They asked me if I’d show you my findings and let you learn from me over this summer now that I’ve recuperated, and if something happened to you –”

“Then why haven’t you?” Dipper yells, unable to take it anymore. “If you were going to teach me anything, why have you been staying away from me all summer? You left me on my own, just like everybody else!” His voice breaks, and he looks down at his feet. Mabel is watching him from the corner. “I didn’t run off to scare you, I ran off to find somebody who would actually listen to me and care about what I said.”

For a moment, Ford is taken aback. Dipper doesn’t need to be told to go to his room, he leaves without another word, but he finds himself sitting on the stairs, emotionally and physically exhausted, waiting. For what, he’s not sure. Maybe for Mabel.

“And you, I don’t care if it was the President himself who invited you to dinner, it is not acceptable to be out at eleven o’clock at night without letting us know your exact whereabouts.”

“What? Grunkle Stan always lets us stay up and have fun way later than this!”

“Are you forgetting this isn’t Stanley’s house anymore, young lady?”

“Don’t ‘young lady’ me!” Mabel spits, stomping out of the kitchen. She grabs her brother by the hand and takes him with her on her way up to the attic. Behind them, they hear their uncles bickering.

Stan puts his head in his hands. “You’re getting to be a lot like Pops, Sixer.”

“At least I’m still his son,” Ford bites back.

Upstairs, Mabel kicks the door shut behind them, blocking out any argument that might have followed. She leans her forehead against the door, and Dipper stares at her, almost scared, because she seems unreachable. A tear drips down to the floor, and he hugs her without a second thought.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, so relieved that she isn’t fighting him. “He shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“I’m not mad that he yelled at me, I’m mad that he yelled at _you_.”

Mabel pulls back and wipes her eyes with her sweater sleeve. It smears her mascara a little obviously, but she doesn’t seem to mind. When did she start wearing mascara? When did Dipper become so absent in her life that he never noticed? He shakes his head and goes to sit on the rug in front of the table between their beds.

“Dipper, what you said back there…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “I guess I just got overemotional. I feel a little better after being out all day. I don’t need Great-Uncle Ford.”

“Amen to that, bro-bro. He’s just a lonely old man who doesn’t remember what family is.” Mabel joins him on the floor, patting her knees to fill the silence. She crosses her legs over each other, facing him to pluck twigs and leaves out of his hair. “So, you said you were with somebody today?”

He rubs the back of his neck. He knew he’d probably have to tell her this sooner or later, but he’s still not sure how to justify it. “Oh, that. Yeah. Bill.”

Mabel squints at him, shaping her fingers into a triangle around her eye. “Illuminati Dorito Bill?”

He cringes, waiting for her to tell him he’s crazy. “Well, yeah, but he’s not a triangle, he’s an actual guy.”

“Ohh, I see. Is he hot?”

“W-what?” Dipper splutters, the tips of his ears burning red. “No, it’s not like, no, I mean – I, I don’t know him well enough to say –”

His sister giggles and punches him in the shoulder. “Chill, Dip Dop. Do you trust him? Even after what he did last year?”

It almost surprises him, how quickly he knows the answer. “Yeah. Even after that.”

“Then that’s all that matters.” Mabel takes his hand and squeezes it, and more than anything he wants to tell her what really was bothering him, that Ford wasn’t the only one he was talking about earlier, that he just wants to feel like he actually has a twin again. Her phone buzzes in her pocket, and she gives him a regretful look. “I’m sorry, I have to take this, bro.”

He fakes a smile and gives her a thumbs-up to say okay. She jumps onto her bed, her back to Dipper, and chatters excitedly, recounting everything that happened since she came home to Pacifica on the other end. Picking out a spot of mold in the rafters to stare at, Dipper sits and listens. Somewhere between then and midnight, Grunkle Stan comes in, loaded down with bags of Mabel’s purchases from the mall that she forgot downstairs. She’s still on the phone, so he doesn’t stay long, except to kiss them both goodnight and whisper an apology to Dipper on Ford’s behalf.

Dipper eventually gives up on getting his sister’s attention again for the night. He climbs into bed and rolls over, only to turn around again hopefully to say, “Night, Mabel.”

She doesn’t answer. Heart sinking, he knows for certain he’ll never be her first priority anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

“Big day, Dippin’ Sauce, rise and shine!”

There’s no reason he should be woken up this early on his birthday, but that’s just another thing to blame Pacifica for. Dipper sighs and turns his head, watching Mabel dance around the room and hum to herself. Once she skips off to the bathroom to change clothes, he rolls out of bed and searches around for a clean shirt. Maybe he won’t even comb his hair.

For now, he jams his hat on his head and goes to the window seat, trying to enjoy the peace and calm while he still can. A familiar face pops up right in front of him, and he can hear the “Boo!” even through the glass. Glancing around furtively, Dipper swings the window open, taking care to avoid hitting Bill this time. Unfairly carefree, Bill relaxes with his arms crossed over the windowsill, his legs floating up behind him.

“You’re here,” Dipper says, as if he can’t believe it.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Bill responds, a smile curling on his lips. “You thought I’d miss your big day?”

Dipper can’t explain why he’s so happy to see the dream demon, but he nearly falls out the window to wrap his arms around Bill’s neck, inhaling what’s become a comforting scent of cinnamon spice and tangerine citrus. This may be the only good thing that happens all day.

“Easy there, kid, I’ll have to fly you away again, and then you won’t get to have that party with your sister you told me about.”

“Some party it’ll be,” he snorts, easing back to sit on his knees on the cushion. “We’re having it at the Northwest manor, so I’d bet you ten dollars I’ll barely see Mabel while we’re there.”

“How much is ten dollars in pounds of gold?” Bill has always had bad timing with his jokes, but Dipper usually humors him anyways. This time, he doesn’t laugh.

“Never mind, I don’t think you get it,” Dipper mumbles, searching the demon’s face. There’s still only puzzled amusement there.

Behind him, the bathroom door creaks open on its rusty hinges. Hastily, Dipper puts his back to the window, holding his hands behind him in an attempt to shoo Bill out of sight. Mabel appears wearing a glittery pink dress, which might be more fashionable if she weren’t wearing her trademark shooting star sweater over it, but that’s Mabel.

“Were you talking to someone?”

“Nope, just me, myself, and I.” Even though he already told her about Bill, he’s not sure how comfortable he’d be if the two of them met. Plus, he reserves the right to be passive-aggressively salty with his sister for messing up their special day like this.

Thankfully, she just shrugs and goes back to the bedroom. Dipper turns around to speak to Bill again, a request on the tip of his tongue, but he’s talking to empty air. His eyebrows knit together with worry, and he sighs, resting his arms on the windowsill to pillow his head. Time has ticked down faster than he was prepared to grasp. Summer’s as good as over, and he may have just missed his last chance to make things right.

Even if Dipper does see Bill again before he leaves tomorrow, he’s not sure he’ll still have the nerve to propose the deal then.

“Hurry up, Dipper, we have to go!”

Just to spite Pacifica, he doesn’t dress up, electing for his regular shorts and the puffy blue vest instead. And, of course, the hat. For luck.

The real party isn’t supposed to start until at least 8:00 that evening, but the twins get to the Northwest manor at 11:00 in the morning to set everything up, and mostly to let Mabel and Pacifica hang out longer. Dipper’s the only one doing any actual work to help out – Pacifica insists her servants can handle everything, but Dipper wishes he and Mabel could add their own touches, the way they always have.

He finds himself staring at the two girls, unable to discern whether he’s envious or jealous, or if it’s just that those emotions go hand in hand. The jealousy is unreasonable; Mabel has every right to have friends other than him. He just never expected her to leave him behind. And as for the envy, he can’t help but think that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if he had a good friend of his own.

And then his thoughts drift to Bill. He thinks about that night in the hollow when he saw the demon’s new form and its long shadow, and how his heart stopped with fear. The time he fled the circus and ran into Bill in the woods again, and reluctantly fell asleep next to him. The evening on the rooftop when they read until the sun set and Bill gave him the hourglass light. The magical day of flying, of meeting the gryphons, of exploring the depths of the forest side by side.

It all passed just like that. Suddenly, his throat feels a little too tight. Some part of him wishes it had been Mabel with him through those adventures, but another part knows nobody but Bill could have shown him those things.

The girls’ laughter breaks through the barrier Dipper put up, and he glances at them irritably. They’re heading inside for lunch, and he doesn’t want to follow, but his stomach rumbles that it does. While he eats (some kind of soup with a French name, which is good but a far cry from his favorite sandwiches), he has to endure their endless chatter, on top of the stifling fanciness of everything in sight. Who even needs three different kinds of spoons to eat _soup_? He’s pretty sure not even Pacifica can justify that.

For the rest of the afternoon, Mabel hangs out with Pacifica in her bedroom, and he’s left to wander around the mansion – some areas of the mansion, at least, the ones that they’re not afraid his filthy peasant hands will contaminate. Dipper makes a point of touching every surface he can. At some point, he gets pretty lost, but he’s bound to find his way back to a main corridor sooner than later. In front of a family portrait, including Pacifica, her parents, and an older woman he doesn’t recognize, he stops to rest, taking a seat on the polished hardwood floor.

Pacifica is young in the photo, no older than six, perched on the lap of that older woman. Grandma Northwest, maybe? Both are smiling brightly, and it’s odd to see her so happy, in the years before she adopted her fake attitude under the pressure to grow up too fast. Offhandedly, Dipper wonders if she smiles like this more often these days, now that she’s close with Mabel. He knows he did, when he was.

It’s not really fair of him to resent her so much. He remembers when she asked for his help to get rid of that lumberjack ghost, and proved her true character by letting the townsfolk in. She was the real hero that day. After stomping mud on her parents’ favorite carpet with her, Dipper had been willing to call her a friend. They still poked fun at their different lifestyles, but there was never anything behind the jabs, not until she stole his sister from him.

That’s not really right, though. Pacifica didn’t do anything. Mabel just attached to her and resolved their differences and found a way to become her best friend, because that’s what Mabel does. There was no stealing. Mabel never belonged to him.

If Mabel’s lost to him, it’s no one’s fault but his. That’s why, if there’s any hope at all, any chance, any deal, he has to take it. Dipper gets to his feet and nods to the picture, the little bit of childhood that Pacifica should have had for longer, and resumes his wandering until he finds a sitting room near the front doors.

It’s starting to get dark out by the time the guests show up. Mabel only invited, like, the whole town, from the news crew to Officer Blubbs and Deputy Durland. Pacifica’s parents will be outraged – when they find out. They’ve been out all day, leaving the children under the care of the many servants that stay at the manor, so the big party on the lawn was entirely their daughter's arrangement.

“Yo!” Wendy yells, rattling the iron bars of the gate with mock desperation. “Somebody let me out! Or in!”

Pacifica opens the gates with the push of a button, and the guests cheer, almost like a reenactment of the night from a year ago. The party is outside this time, partially to incur less wrath from the Northwests, partially because it’s more fun like this anyways. There are tables and lawn chairs already set up for everybody, and speakers playing some of Mabel’s favorite songs.

For the first time, Dipper would say this is her birthday, not theirs. Sure, as many people wish it to him as they do to her, but it just doesn’t feel right without hearing their names together rather than separate. He hangs out with Soos and Grunkle Stan for the most part, sipping some punch and waiting around for the fireworks.

The Northwests show up a while later, and look on the festivities with horror. Their front lawn is completely overrun. They pick their way through the crowd, trying not to make contact with anybody, searching for their daughter to punish, but Pacifica is well-hidden.

“Surprise!” Mabel shouts at them as they slip in through the front door and undoubtedly lock it behind them.

Dipper catches her eye almost by accident; she beams and waves him over. They meet at the big table with balloons pinned down on either side, looking across at one another for a quiet moment among all the music and lights and laughter. Neither of them say it, but both can tell how much has grown between them.

“Shall we cut the cake?” Mabel suggests, picking up the big knife and waving it around a little too freely.

“I’ll let you do the honors,” Dipper answers, almost drowned out by the background noise. He doesn’t stick around to see her do it, or even try a slice of his own birthday cake.

As the guests flock to gather around the table, he ducks and weaves against the flow, and releases his breath with relief when he finally pushes through. The gates are still wide open. He’s sure Mabel won’t miss him, as long as she’s with Pacifica. Let her have her night.

Dipper wanders down the side of the road until he finds a slope that isn’t so steep, and slides down to the forest floor. He’s never been through the woods that surround the Northwest manor – never really wanted to. He’s glad he has his backpack with him, and in it the special lamp Bill gave him. As he kneels down to dig it out, he hears the crackles of the first fireworks going off, bursting the night sky in pinks and reds. He holds the hourglass by either end, the warmth of his hands making it shine with its white-blue radiance. It gives him a visibility of about five feet into the dark pines, and he nearly drops it when he sees somebody standing in the light.

“Bill?”

The two of them look at each other in silence for a minute. Dipper almost can’t believe he lucked up and ran into Bill again after coming to terms with missing his chance earlier; there’s some similar feeling in Bill’s eyes, but he can’t place it or explain it.

“Happy birthday, Pine Tree,” Bill says, just a little bit late. He clears his throat and motions for Dipper to walk with him, trying to find a way back into their familiar routine. “Fun party?”

“No. You’re welcome to go up there and set everything on fire if you want to. Tell them I invited you.” He sounds very serious, but when he glances up at Bill, he cracks a smile. “I’m kidding, please don’t.”

“As if I don’t have better things to do than terrorize kids at a twelve-year-old kid’s party.”

Dipper looks at him oddly. “Twelve? I’m fourteen today, Bill.”

Apparently, that’s news to Bill. “Really? Huh. In my defense, time passes differently for immortals.”

“How so?”

“Years are...” Bill waves his hand in a circle, searching for the right explanation. “Sometimes slower, sometimes faster. They don’t mean as much when you’ve seen a million go by already. Or maybe it’s closer to two now. The concept of aging is kind of obsolete to me. I lost count of my own age a long time ago. By demon standards, I could be fourteen, too, for all I know.”

Dipper studies his strong jawline, estimates his height, decides firmly that he can’t be less than 20, and bursts out laughing. “Don’t flatter yourself, you can’t be that young.”

“I’m just saying, you don’t see any gray in my hair, do you?”

They fall back into easy friendship like water flowing with the current, bantering back and forth as they walk, but it’s harder to hold on to now, fragile, because there isn’t much time left. One of many unanswered questions nags at Dipper. Why did Bill spend this time with him in the first place? He wants to ask, but there’s something far more important that he won’t let slip by him again.

The light from the hourglass fades, crammed into his vest pocket so he can wipe his sweaty hands on his shorts. He stops walking, looking up at the brilliance of the night, clear stars visible for miles and miles without the haze of pollution that clogs any place that isn’t a small town like this.

Bill stops, too, and looks back at him inquisitively. His eye gleams gold in the dark. “What’s on your mind, kid?”

Dipper shivers and steels his nerve. No matter how much he’s grown to like Bill, this is the time to remember that he’s a demon, and if Dipper has to do this then he has to be smart about it. “I want to make a deal.”

Bill pauses for a single beat, and then walks closer. It takes all Dipper has not to back away.

“I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

“I want you to fix me and Mabel. I want you to bring our relationship back to exactly how it was a year ago, and keep it that way. Make us forget about the arguments we’ve had, make us close again.” Lowering his eyes, Dipper adds, “Please.”

“And in return?”

“Whatever you want. You can’t hurt my family, you have to hold up your end, and I’ll give you anything.”

“No price could buy what that would cost me,” Bill says cryptically, his smile almost pained. A smile that says he knows more than he’s telling. “You get a freebie this time, Pine Tree.”

“I…what?”

“I don’t need anything from you. Shake my hand and it’s done.”

The dream demon pulls the glove off with his teeth and holds out his hand. Dipper starts to meet it, but hesitates an inch from contact.

“This isn’t a trick, is it? Not like last time?”

“Last time you failed to specify any terms, and you didn’t make me specify mine, but you know better and you should trust me not to hurt you by now,” Bill snaps, rage flashing across his face. That does nothing to reassure Dipper. It doesn’t make sense for Bill to be so generous and then turn bitter about it. It’s never been more difficult to read him. “Do we have a deal or _not_?”

Finally, Dipper shakes his hand, and they’re both engulfed in blue flames up to their elbows, but it doesn’t burn nearly as bright or as harsh as Bill’s gaze. Even as the fire dies down, Bill won’t let him go.

“I changed my mind,” he says with deadly softness, “but it’s too late to change the deal. So you have to promise me this, and keep it, even though you’re a human and humans never do.”

“Promise you what?” Dipper’s pretty sure his insides will stay permanently knotted up if this conversation goes on much longer. There’s something so strange about the way Bill’s acting, as if he’s covering up some sort of hurt with hostility. Bill Cipher, hurt? Dipper just can’t see it.

Bill squeezes his hand, hard, with the desperation of someone who knows they’re asking for the impossible. “Don’t forget me, Pine Tree. Don’t.”

“Why would I…?” Dipper’s hand slips from Bill’s slackened hold, but he instinctively moves forward, reaching it out for Bill again. “Hold on, is that what you’re angry about? You’ve been practically my only friend all summer, there’s no way I’d –”

“You have a nice soul, Dipper, keep it safe for me,” Bill whispers, in some twisted version of a farewell, and then he’s gone in a shimmer.

Dipper doesn’t know what the most unnerving part of that exchange was. He’s leaning toward the fact that Bill called him by his name. That’s too rare to be without meaning, but his head hurts too much to deal with it right now. With his hands on the hourglass light, holding on to the highlights of his summer with the dream demon, he retraces his steps back to the Northwest manor.

The rest of the night seems to pass in stop-motion. Nothing has changed, but there’s a process in the works, freeze-framing moments as magic manipulates the things it shouldn’t. There’s a smile on his face, and cake, and during the car ride home Mabel falls asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. Dipper completely forgets that there's anything odd about the party ending so nicely. 

 

In the morning, they wake up so late they’ll have to rush to finish packing their luggage, but neither of them get up for a solid ten minutes.

“Fourteen years old!” Mabel cheers with a lazy fist pump.

“Do you feel older?” Dipper asks, turning his head on the pillow to look across the room at her.

“Nope. You?”

“Nope.”

They smile, perfectly content, convinced they’ll stay young forever. Nothing is missing.

The goodbyes from the bus stop are as hard as they were last year. Soos squeezes the twins and tells them to stay cool, dudes. Pacifica is there, giving Mabel a hug without holding back like she normally does, and it turns into a dogpile when Candy and Grenda join in. Wendy and the gang give Dipper one fist-bump each – even Robbie.

“Hang out with us a little more next time,” he invites. “But, you know, only if you wanna. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Dipper nods. He can’t imagine why he didn’t spend enough time with them this summer, but whatever it is, he’ll definitely take that offer next year. Maybe then, when he’s turning fifteen, Wendy will… He gets a little red considering the possibilities.

And then, of course, there’s Grunkle Stan. Ford couldn’t be bothered to show up, but there’s Stan, the universal constant of their visits to Gravity Falls. As the bus pulls up and the doors open, Mabel and Dipper drop their suitcases and run back to him one last time.

“Gonna miss you kids,” he sniffs, holding them both close. “Must be, ah, must be someone cutting onions around here. Go on, go on, you gotta go. I’ll see you next summer, alright? My Shack is your Shack, anytime.”

Dipper mumbles an “I love you” into Stan’s shoulder; Mabel sobs it against his chest. He doesn’t want to let them go, but he does, walking them to the bus and lifting their luggage on board for them. They wait until the door hisses shut before they run to the back of the empty bus, letting the windows down to shout final goodbyes and wave at everybody.

Grunkle Stan raises his glasses up to wipe at his eyes with the heel of his palm, and then lets out his characteristic gruff laugh at the silly face Mabel makes to cheer him up. The twins have never met their grandfather, but they don’t think he could top their Grunkle if he tried.

They twist in their seats to watch the town recede behind the bus, holding hands like nothing could ever separate them. As they pass the “Now leaving Gravity Falls” sign, Dipper gets a small chill, as if there’s someone watching them from the forest. That wouldn’t make any sense though. He shrugs and dismisses it, and quickly becomes involved in a game of bus seat treasure hunt with Mabel.

Sitting with his back to a pine tree, the demon hangs his head. The way his hope fades isn’t gradual, it’s spontaneous, and his glare bathes the nearest bug in blue fire. It was already burning before, though; it’s one of those pretty cerulean fireflies from that night in the hollow, though by now they’re out of season, so who knows what this last one is doing here.

The air blowing in through the open bus windows is still warm, and everything outside is still green, but summer is over in Gravity Falls.


	6. UPDATE

If you are here looking for a new chapter, go back to read chapter 1! I promise you, there's a surprise. I finally got my shit together and started rewriting this monster. Check it out if you're still into the story. It's going to be a lot better from here on out. 

CHAPTERS AFTER CHAPTER ONE DO NOT FOLLOW THE NEW STORYLINE. They're only there as placeholders, and will be replaced with new work in due time. Let's see if I can actually stick to an update schedule this time.

Thank you for reading.


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